The Thermal Analysis and Heat Dissipation Structure Optimization of a Propeller Driver System

Abstract

The thermal performance of the propeller driver system is very important for underwater vehicles. A new kind of cylindrical heat sink is designed for a certain propeller driver system. The performances of the heat sink are analyzed, mainly using numerical methods. The thermal influences of structure parameters, such as base thickness, fins length, and fin number, are studied for the heat sink with an orthogonal experimental method. The results show that all three parameters have positive impacts on the heat dissipation of the driver. Compared with the fin numbers and the fin length, the base thickness has a relatively small impact on the working temperature of the driver. Compared to the initial design, the maximum temperature of the propeller driver drops by 22.3% with the designed novel cylindrical heat sink in the studied cases.