Parametric Study of Silicon-Based Embedded Microchannels With 3D Manifold Coolers (EMMC) for High Heat Flux (~1 kW/cm2) Power Electronics Cooling
Abstract Thermal management of power electronics continues to be one of the limiting factors in the peak power capability of the traction inverter system and overall efficiency of the e-drive. Successful design and implementation of Embedded Microchannels with a 3D-Manifold Cooler, or EMMC, could enable higher power density that allows increase in the inverter peak power output. In the present work, we have conducted a parametric study on geometric dimensions of the EMMCs to analyze thermofluidic performance by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. The study was conducted for a 5 mm × 5 mm cold-plate foot print, heat flux 800 W/cm2, and single-phase water as working fluid at inlet temperature of 25 °C. We implemented strategies such as i) symmetric distribution of manifold inlet/outlet conduits, ii) reducing the thickness of cold-plate substrate, iii) increasing fluid-solid interfacial area in cold-plate microchannels that resulted in reduction in thermal resistance of the baseline EMMC design from 0.1 to 0.04 cm2-K/W with pressure drop from 8 to 37 kPa.