Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
CASE STUDIES IN THERMAL ENGINEERING, cilt.73, 2025 (SCI-Expanded, Scopus)
Power electronics equipment such as MOSFETs, IGBTs, GTOs, and thyristors are widely used in many fields, such as transportation, medical, renewable energy, telecommunications, and HVAC. The thermal stresses that develop in these devices are among the most critical factors affecting their performance, reliability, and lifespan. With the development of technology and manufacturing methods, the size of power electronics equipment gradually decreases while their energy density increases rapidly. As a result, an efficient thermal management method has become essential. In this study, a heat sink is designed and tested for cooling IGBT arrays of an inverter used in solar PV energy systems. Differing from conventional heat sinks, a skived-type heat sink with high aspect ratio is employed under the multi-heat source case. The vapor chambers are embedded into the heat sink base to reduce the maximum temperature on the IGBT and increase the heat-spreading capability. The effects of the heat sink parameters on the cooling performance are determined by CFD analysis and compared with experimental results. The effective thermal conductivity of the vapor chamber is simplified using the isotropic and orthotropic approaches. It is confirmed that at the high heat flux case the temperatures from the orthotropic thermal conductivity model are higher than those obtained from the isotropic model and are in better agreement with the measured data. Moreover, it is observed that the proposed heat sink reduces the maximum temperature and thermal resistance by about 6.63 degrees C and 16.64 %, respectively, when operating at low fan power.