Compact Cooling Design for SiC Based Solid State Circuit Breaker

Solid-state circuit breakers (SSCBs) provide several advantages over conventional mechanical circuit breakers. These include precise DC grid integration, current control, remote operation, and customizable protection settings. Additionally, with silicon carbide (SiC) MOSFET power modules, faster response time and compact size are targeted. With compact size being a target, and quadratic power losses of SiC power modules, thermal management solutions must be considered. This paper describes a first approach to thermal simulation for predicting SiC module junction temperature in SSCBs. Additional simulations predict the temperature build-up inside of an enclosure. An iterative process is laid out for heat sink optimization to maintain a safe junction temperature under steady-state conditions.