Implementation of a Topologically Optimized Heat Sink for Non-Uniform Heat Fluxes in an Electric-Vehicle Fast-Charger

High-power electrical topologies, typically employed in power conversion systems such as electric vehicle (EV) charg-ers, often utilize several discrete power semiconductor devices with varying electrical loads and material properties, resulting in non-uniform heat fluxes. Due to manufacturing limitations, commercially available heat sinks are designed to reduce overall device temperature but cannot provide an application-specific solution to target these non-uniform heat fluxes. This work utilizes a novel additive manufacturing technique using wire-arc thermal spray to fabricate a topologically optimized heat sink for cooling an EV fast charger. The heat sink is designed to reduce the temperature differences in power semiconductor devices with non-uniform heat fluxes. A modified commercially available heat sink containing a copper tube embedded in an aluminum plate is used as a baseline and compared to the proposed design. Experimental results demonstrate that the optimized heat sink yields a 27% reduction in average thermal resistance from the cooling fluid to the surface of the heat sink under each device and a 25% reduction in maximum heat sink surface temperature difference.