Abstract The integrated Pin-Fin heatsink can effectively reduce the junction-fluid thermal resistance of the automotive power module, which is a state-of-the-art and promising solution for the thermal management of the power control unit. It has shown that topological characterization plays a crucial role in the overall performance of the Pin-Fin heatsink. According to the basic geometric structures, such as circles, squares, and ellipses, the parameters of initial structures are simulated and experimentally analyzed using empirical enumeration or arrangement and combination. However, there are only numerical solution methods to optimize the Pin-Fin structure, which are time-consuming, high cost, and have a low degree of freedom. Limited by the existing geometry aspects, there needs to be a method capable enough to contain all geometrical aspects of the Pin-Fin structure to make the thermal-fluid co-optimal design. Inspired by these research gaps, based on the topology optimization method and gradient descent algorithm, the varied-density-oriented mathematical model is proposed to characterize the Pin-Fin heatsink. Firstly, the detailed fluid field and thermal field control functions are analyzed, focusing on the PCU model. Then, penalty factors are applied in the material interpolation to characterize the relationship between the fluid and solid domains. The junction resistance and pressure drop are key indicators in the topology optimization formulation. Adjusting the weight factors achieves topology optimization results under specific design requirements. Besides the even power dissipation, the principle of unbalanced power dissipation on optimization results is analyzed. The topology optimization method can reasonably distribute materials under the unbalanced heat source and achieve the goal of minimizing the thermal-fluid co-optimal design. The front-to-front converter is constructed to evaluate the performance of the optimized Pin-Fin structure. Comprehensive experiments are presented to ensure the feasibility and validity of proposed models and methodologies compared with the commercial circle, diamond, triangle, and teardrop structures. It is found that with the help of the topology optimization, the designed Pin-Fin heatsink reduces the junction-fluid thermal resistance by 12 % and eliminates the mismatched junction difference by 80 % compared with the traditional circular design. The diamond, triangle, and teardrop shape Pin-Fin heatsink prototypes are also analyzed under the same load current and busbar voltage. Even for the optimal diamond-shape Pin-Fin, the junction temperature is still higher than that of the structure proposed in this paper, which verifies the effectiveness of the design method. The following conclusions can be drawn from the simulation and experiment analysis. Penalty factors affect the convergence of topology optimization. Building the multi-objective optimization model can accelerate the design speed and reduce the research and development cost. The topology optimization method has a high degree of design freedom to achieve the co-optimized design. The optimized structure can reduce chip temperature differences by 80 %, and the temperature gradient between each chip is less than 1 ℃. The thermal resistance can be reduced by 12 %, and the maximum temperature rise can be reduced by 6 ℃ under different load conditions. Experimental results verify that the optimized Pin-Fin structure can effectively improve the thermal performance and the reliability of the automotive power module.
Li Kaiyan,Zeng Zheng,Sun Peng等. Topology Optimization Design of Pin-Fin for Automotive Power Module[J]. Transactions of China Electrotechnical Society, 2023, 38(18): 4963-4977.
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2023, Vol. 38 
