Abstract
Large implementation of fully electric ship (FES) on next generation vessels with advanced electric propulsion drive and high-power electronic modules will increase high thermal requirements onboard ship. Traditional cooling processes by natural and forced air-cooling have limitations on the capability to handle anticipated heat dissipation requirements of high-power electronics. Two-phase closed loop thermosyphon (CLT) as one of liquid cooling technologies for power electronics is considered to be a compact thermal management device due to its flexibility in size and cooling capacity range, and it offers significant cost and reliability over systems that require pumps. The greatest benefit of CLT device is its simple composition and reliability for transporting heat with a small decrease in temperature, and therefore one considers it as a promising heat transfer device onboard ships and is suited for robust shipboard cooling requirements. In this study, a high heat flux CLT for cooling an IGBT module which comprises one of high-power electronics modules in the inverter of electric propulsion system was developed and examined up to a range of over 4.0 MW/m2.
