Development of High-Performance GRIP Metal Cold Plates for IGBT Cooling

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Insulated-gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) improve the energy efficiency and battery range for electrical vehicles (EVs) and the market for them is rapidly expanding. High-power IGBTs generate a significant amount of heat during operation and must be adequately cooled to ensure good electrical performance and reliability. This is typically accomplished by mounting the IGBTs to "cold plates" through which a liquid cooling fluid (typically water-glycol) is circulated. This technology faces a challenge: heat transfer within these cold plates should be maximized while maintaining a low pressure drop.NUCAP has developed a novel surface enhancement which significantly increases convective heat transfer. There is an opportunity implement these surface enhancements into a new class of GRIPMetal (a patented technology where metal hooks are distributed on metal surfaces) IGBT cold plates which have superior thermal-hydraulic performance. This has the potential to yield a technology that is low-profile and lightweight making it an attractive commercial offering for the growing EV and renewable energy sectors.The objective of this project is to support NUCAP in their development of GRIPMetal IGBT cold plates by performing the thermal-hydraulic design, optimization, and full performance characterization and validation of this technology. This will be accomplished through a combination of experimental characterization, numerical modelling, and reliability testing. The outcomes will include accurate quantification of GRIPMetal cold plate performance and comparisons to existing commercially available offerings. The project will also yield thermal-hydraulic models for GRIPMetal cold plates and cold-plate specific design tools which will allow NUCAP to design and optimize other sizes of cold plates for further applications.