Flattened Power Electronics Enabling Optimal Thermal Management for Energy Conversion

This paper develops the flattened power electronic design method to improve the power-density and thermal management performance. Power converters are the key components for electrified energy conversion. Power-density is one of the most crucial criteria to evaluate the performance of the power converters. The compact power converter design typically requires the specialized printed circuit board (PCB) layout, careful component selection and optimal thermal management system design. During the energy conversion process of the power converter, the power loss due to the high power delivery can generate huge amount of heat. This amount of heat can result in high temperature rise or even power failure of the whole power converter system if not properly dissipated or cooled down by the thermal management system. This paper designs a flattened power converter to optimize the thermal management system with more heat dissipation capability. Doing so, the total area of heat dissipation can be enlarged without consuming extra space. The power-density can be improved accordingly. A three-phase inverter is demonstrated to verify the proposed method.