Thermal Management of Power Modules Based on the Hybrid Cooling System: Phase Change Material with Coolant Fluid

Keeping the operating temperature in the allowable range of the power module, under a very high heat flux, is of particular importance in the performance of the systems and their reliability. In this investigation, as a new approach, a new hybrid thermal heat sink consisting of phase change material with different arrangement and mass flow rates has been used for cooling an Insulatedgate bipolar transistor. As an innovation, to reduce the operating temperature of the power module at a heat flux of 100 W/cm2, the paraffin and Metal-based PCM have been applied in the water cooling chamber and simulated simultaneously. The finite volume method and piezo algorithm was used to solve the governing equations. Then, the effect of the flow rate and arrangement of PCMs on temperature variations of the power module has been examined in terms of time. The melting process of the PCM was numerically simulated by the enthalpy-porosity method in threedimensional computational domain. The results revealed that using the metal-based PCM compared to paraffin due to its high thermal conductivity increased the heat transfer rate. As a result, the operating temperature of the power module decreased. Also, metal-based PCM in 4 different arrangements (A,B,C,D) performs better than the conventional cooling system. Finally, it reduced the operating temperature of the power module. Based on the results obtained at flow rates of 0.0025, 0.00375, and 0.005 kg/s, arrangement Case D showed the best performance by reducing 3 °C compared to the pure working fluid in the power module.