Numerical simulation on performance of tubular water-cooled radiator for IGBT module

TANG Yu-tu1, DING Jie2

(1.Zhuzhou CSR Times Electric Co., Ltd., CSR Zhuzhou Institute Co., Ltd., Zhuzhou 412001, China; 2.CSR

Research of Electrical Technology & Material Engineering, CSR Zhuzhou Institute Co., Ltd., Zhuzhou 412001, China)

Abstract: In order to avoid plate type water-cooled radiator may have the risk of leakage because of the virtual welding, a tubular water-cooled radiator was designed. Take tubular water-cooled radiator as the research object, the gird model for numerical simulation was established by using HyperMesh software, and then the velocity, pressure and temperature distribution of tubular water-cooled radiator were analyzed by FLUENT software. Effects of flow rate, pipe material and thickness of the base plate on the highest temperatures of insulated gate bipolar transistor（IGBT） chip were studied. The research results show that the pressure drop is virtually a quadratic relationship between the flow rate, the highest chip temperature reducing trend with the increase of the flow rate from fast to slow, and the highest chip temperature decreases with the increase of thermal conductivity of pipe material, the plate thickness contribute little to the highest chip temperature, and the temperature uniformity of water-cooled radiator with single pipeline is poor. Through the analysis of the pressure loss, the optimization of a single pipeline to dual pipeline scheme was put forwarded. The scheme can make the pipeline pressure drop by about 80% compared with the previous, and have better temperature uniformity. The research results can provide guidance for the design of the tubular water-cooled radiator.

Key words: insulated gate bipolar transistor（IGBT）; tubular water-cooled radiator; pressure drop; temperature; velocity