Thermal Management for Ship Electrification—Approaches for Power Electronic Building Blocks and Power Corridors

This article presents an overview of thermal management solutions, in support of ship electrification. The article addresses the cooling of power electronic building blocks (PEBBs) that are seen as fundamental units of power distribution systems that can be integrated to serve diverse power management functions. In addition, the article discusses their integration into power corridors, both of which are seen as enablers of flexible and reconfigurable power distribution systems in the next-generation Navy ships. PEBBs are envisioned to support reductions in production and installation costs, facilitate maintenance, and support ship resiliency. Air, liquid, two-phase, and indirect cooling approaches are discussed in the context of specific building block configurations built and designed at CPES (Virginia Tech). The article presents an overview of ongoing efforts toward the design, construction, and testing of cooling technology prototypes and a discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of each of the four cooling approaches.