FEM Thermo-Fluid Dynamic Analysis of Advanced Metal Finned Liquid Cold Plates for High Power Semiconductor Devices and Modules

This article shows two examples of finned 3-D-printable metal liquid-cooled cold plates for power semiconductor applications: a circular cold plate for press-pack devices, and a square design for power semiconductor modules. The circular cold plate for press-pack devices, fabricated by selective laser melting (SLM), is experimentally characterized and numerically simulated with a 3-D finite element method (FEM) commercial tool. The fabricated prototype shows a good geometrical definition of the fins, thanks to the optimized choice of the metal powder used by the SLM process, and of the fin block geometry. The comparison of measured and modeled temperature maps and pressure drop values also serves as validation of the FEM simulation used for the design of the rectangular cold plate for power modules. Extensive simulations are carried out in search of the optimized geometry for the rectangular fin block and the inlet and outlet terminals. The new finned 3-D-printable design for power modules is compared with a traditional serpentine design and shown to outperform it significantly in terms of both cooling efficiency and pressure drop.