Energies, Vol. 18, Pages 4455: Numerical Analysis on Thermal and Flow Performance of Honeycomb-Structured Microchannel Cooling Plate for IGBT

Energies, Vol. 18, Pages 4455: Numerical Analysis on Thermal and Flow Performance of Honeycomb-Structured Microchannel Cooling Plate for IGBT

Energies doi: 10.3390/en18164455

Authors:
Guangtao Zhai
Hao Yang
Wu Gong
Fan Wu
Junxiong Zeng
Xiaojin Fu
Tieyu Gao

In high-power insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) module thermal management, the structural design of microchannel cooling plates plays a crucial role in determining heat dissipation efficiency and temperature uniformity. This study focuses on the effects of honeycomb-structured unit dimensions and arrangements, as well as inlet/outlet configurations of the cooling plate on its thermal and flow performance. Additionally, the influence of different coolant inlet velocities and temperatures is investigated. Under constant coolant flow rate and boundary conditions, four design configurations with varying pore widths and channel spacings were evaluated numerically. The results indicate that the optimized honeycomb structure can reduce the module’s peak temperature by approximately 8.7 K while significantly improving temperature uniformity and maintaining a moderate pressure drop. Moreover, increasing the number of inlets and outlets effectively lowers the pressure drop and enhances thermal uniformity. Although increasing the coolant flow rate and reducing the inlet temperature can further improve cooling performance, these measures also lead to notable increases in energy consumption and pressure loss. Therefore, a trade-off between thermal enhancement and system energy efficiency must be considered in practical applications. The findings of this study provide practical guidance for the design optimization of high-efficiency microchannel liquid cooling systems in power electronic applications.