Power electronics converters are making significant progress in making power conversion and distribution systems more efficient, reliable, power dense, and so on, partly by improving thermal management. This advancement in power electronics introduces...
Power electronics converters are making significant progress in making power conversion and distribution systems more efficient, reliable, power dense, and so on, partly by improving thermal management. This advancement in power electronics introduces new challenges for mitigating high power losses from power switches such as IGBTs, MOSFETs, etc. Air-cooled heat sinks are less expensive, lighter, and easier to install than liquid-cooled heat sinks, making them an excellent choice for high-risk applications such as shipboard applications. For this application, increasing the converter’s power density is also an important consideration when choosing or designing the thermal management solution; the optimal design of the heat sink must be pursued to evaluate the benefits of the power throughput of the converter. This paper employs a genetic algorithm (NSGA-II) that performs multi-objective optimization of a forced air-cooled fin heat sink. The Pareto optimal front is shown, which maximizes power loss mitigation capability while minimizing heat sink volume and mass. The heat sink design is also validated using Finite Element Analysis (FEA).