An approach to the regulated cooling of power systems

This paper presents the development of a regulation approach and its circuit implementation for the cooling of power electronics assemblies, aimed at reducing the amplitude of thermal cycles and improving overall system performance and reliability. In particular, it considers the case of forced-convection air-cooling and proposes a methodology to continuously change the speed of the fan as a function of the load conditions (i.e., the power dissipation in the active devices) to try and keep a constant value of the heat-sink temperature. The activity involves some theoretical analysis, experimental testing and design by simulation. Proof-of-concept experimental demonstration of the approach is also presented. Though dependent to some extent on the characteristics of the specific system considered, the proposed solution is suitable to be applied to a broad range of power conversion applications.