Thermal optimization of water heat sink for power converters with tight thermal constraints

The aim of this work is to show how it is possible to improve the reliability of a power converter by means of thermal–fluid dynamic numerical analysis. Power electronic converters such as those for High Energy Physics Experiments (HEPEs), must operate in hostile environment with tight thermal constraints and the reliability must be high because of the inaccessibility during the experiments and the high costs of the overall setup. Due to the high power density, the presence of closed environments and the requirement of non-thermal interaction with other subsystems, a liquid cooling system is mandatory. 3D FEM and/or FVM simulations can be used to analyze thermal fluid dynamic behavior of those systems and can be a useful support to design heat sinks optimized for specific applications. We show a comparison of different heat sink solutions to improve the thermal management of a 1.5 kW DC/DC hybrid power module.