Conference Agenda

This work presents a numerical investigation of a liquid-cooled traction-inverter module, with particular attention to the effect of local water-jacket modifications on the thermo-hydraulic behaviour of the cooling structure. A steady-state CFD model of the complete geometry was first developed to evaluate the thermal response of the module and the corresponding hydraulic performance under the considered operating conditions. For the reference layout, the predicted junction temperatures showed a non-uniform distribution among the three legs. An alternative water-jacket configuration was then assessed in order to verify whether the hydraulic losses could be reduced without significant thermal degradation. The modified layout reduced the pressure drop by about 14%, while the increase in junction temperature remained limited to about 0.2-0.8% depending on the considered leg. In addition, CFD-derived convective coefficients were transferred to a FEM framework in order to evaluate the transient thermal response of the assembly in terms of junction-to-fluid thermal impedance. The FEM results showed a slight thermal asymmetry among the three legs and a position-dependent mutual-heating behaviour consistent with the non-uniform cooling conditions predicted by CFD. Overall, the results suggest that suitable local water-jacket modifications may provide a favourable compromise between hydraulic efficiency and thermal performance, while also enabling an integrated CFD-FEM workflow for the thermal assessment of power-electronics packages.