Numerical Study on Cooling Performance Characteristics of 22 kW Traction Inverter Using MHD Pump-Based Cooling System

Abstract

The transportation sector is sharply shifting towards electric vehicles (EVs) to reduce environmental issues and the energy crisis. To enhance the driving range and performance of EVs, the integral parts of EVs are being developed with higher energy densities and compact structures. Traction inverters are one of the important parts of EVs which are continuously updating to higher power densities with smaller sizes. This has led to issues of high heat generation, which causes the performance degradation and failure of traction inverters. Therefore, an efficient cooling strategy needs to be proposed for the effective thermal management of traction inverters in EVs. In the present work, the magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) pump-based cooling system is developed for the thermal management of traction inverter for EVs. The cooling performance of traction inverters is investigated using a MHD pump-based cooling system with water and ferrofluid as coolants. The outlet velocity, inverter maximum temperature, and Nusselt number are numerically simulated as the cooling performance characteristics for various operating conditions of inlet velocity, magnetic field intensity, voltage, and volume fraction of ferrofluid. The coupled numerical model is developed using COMSOL Multiphysics commercial software to simulate the cooling performance of a traction inverter with an MHD pump-based cooling system under various conditions. The MHD pump improves the cooling performance of a traction inverter for ferrofluid cooling over water cooling. The cooling performance of the traction inverter improves with an increase in inlet velocity for both water and ferrofluid cooling. However, with an increase in voltage, magnetic field intensity, and volume fraction, the cooling performance of the traction inverter improves only for ferrofluid cooling. The outlet velocity, inverter maximum temperature and Nusselt number in the case of water cooling are 4.03 mm/s and 7.02 mm/s, 49.65 °C, respectively, whereas that in the case of ferrofluid cooling are 40.96 °C, 15.35, and 18.49, respectively. Further, the cooling performance improves for ferrofluid cooling at a magnetic field intensity of 0.4 T and volume fraction of 10% with outlet velocity, inverter maximum temperature, and Nusselt number approach to 12.08 mm/s, 32 °C and 21.43, respectively.