Heat sink design procedure for a solar battery charger

Advancements in the field of power electronics with exponentially growing applications requires systems to be highly efficient as well as compact. Increased power density of systems requires efficient heat transfer from semiconductor devices to the ambient. Thermal design of the system is one of the main deciding factors for reliability and therefore optimum heat sink design is required. In this work a novel heat sink is designed and tested at rated power conditions. Different heat sink designs are evaluated using thermal simulations by application of SOLIDWORKS and ANSYS tools. Thermal imaging of the heat sink under actual experimental conditions validates the design. Method for heat sink design of any arbitrary shape, for maximum heat extraction, is also presented in this paper. The designed aluminium heat sink weighs merely 500 gm and can dissipate upto 100 W of power with forced air convection by using a 3 W fan, while offering less than 0.3°C/W of thermal resistance.