Journal of Emerging Trends in Engineering and Applied Sciences: Research Areas

Abstract:
Power inverters enable efficient conversion of DC voltage and current to AC voltage and current and are intermediate device in renewable energy technology application especially solar energy. The key technologies behind power inverters switching operation are the semiconductor devices such as the IRF 3205 MOSFET chip. During operation the switches dissipate heat and if the dissipated heat is not properly managed, thermally induced failure occur. This research is aim at optimizing a heat sink for a 24VDC/2.5K.V.A using the fmincon toolbox in Matlab R2013a from the geometry of fin heat sink for efficient and reliable operation of the power inverter. The thermal resistance, fval, of the optimized heat sink is equal to 0.0457 oC/W which is less than the thermal resistance of sink to ambient of the IRF 3205 MOSFET switch of 0.063 oC/W at a factor of safety of 1.5. An optimized heat sink using the model created would lead to reduction in size, weight and cost of power inverter.

Keywords: reliability, heat sink, thermal resistance, renewable energy, mosfet chip, dissipate, switches

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