Effects on thermal performance enhancement of pin-fin structures for insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) cooling in high voltage heater system

The thermal performance enhancement of pin-fin structures for IGBT cooling in high voltage heater (HVH) system is numerically investigated and experimentally verified in this study. The results revealed that there may be a risk of thermal failure of the IGBT in existing HVH systems. Additionally, a new heat exchanger was designed with pin-fin structures to enhance heat transfer for cooling the IGBT component. To analyze the influence of pin-fin parameters on the cooling effect, a L16(4̂5) orthogonal array was selected to identify the main and secondary parameters, then the optimal combination scheme was found. The sensitivity analysis result showed that the diameter of the pin-fin had the greatest influence on the amount of heat transfer, and the height of pin-fin is the second. For cooling uniformity, height is the most important parameter and the diameter is the second. The optimization scheme obtained by orthogonal design could simultaneously meet the requirements of heat transfer and cooling uniformity. Compared with the original model, the maximum temperature and the maximum difference of the average temperatures of the IGBT chip layer decreased 9.4% and 14.6%, respectively.