Comparison of Thermal Performance of Different Power Electronic Stack Constructions

IGBT (Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor) power modules are of great importance in the development of Electrical Vehicles (including Fuel Cell Vehicles) and Hybrid Electrical Vehicles. The effective thermal management of power modules requires the optimized system configuration of both power modules and coldplates/heatsinks. In this paper, three different stack constructions of IGBT power modules are proposed and their thermal performance is studied using 3-D finite element simulations. The thermal resistance and temperature distribution under both isothermal and convectional (liquid cooled) boundary conditions are carefully calculated and compared. The advantage and disadvantage for each of three stack constructions are discussed and presented.