INVESTIGATION OF AN ALUMINIUM-COPPER CLAD METAL BASEPLATE FOR LIQUID COOLING: EXPERIMENTAL CHARACTERIZATION AND THERMAL MODELLING

摘要

Previous studies have shown that liquid cooling of coldplates and baseplates appears to be the near-term solution for the current cooling demand of the high power electronics market. Moreover, combination of direct cooling of power modules and pin fin baseplates offers a more compact, reliable and cost effective cooling technology than traditional solutions. This paper will focus on hybrid and electric vehicle inverter cooling requirements. For automotive applications additional variables need to be considered by engineers when concentrating on finding the optimal cooling solution: cost efficiency, weight and long-term endurance should be added to the design considerations. A new interesting solution matching all design requirements could be a pin fin aluminum-copper clad metal baseplate. The aluminum (cooling) and copper (soldering) layers are bounded by combination of rolling and annealing insuring a high adhesion between metal layers. An experimental study has been conducted in order to characterize a pin fin aluminum-copper clad metal baseplate. Analysis of results show that the pin fin aluminum-copper baseplate exhibits enhanced thermal performances compared to a full aluminum configuration and also significant weight and cost reduction when compared to an all copper configuration. Additionally, nickel-plating process is no longer needed to avoid dissimilar metal corrosion as only the pin fin aluminum layer is exposed to the liquid cooling media. Finally, because numerical and experimental techniques become quite complex when adding additional variables to the array of design considerations, a basic thermal modeling has been performed to obtain design correlations suitable for a parametric design.