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Wiles, Randy H

Publications and source records attributed to Wiles, Randy H.

A 10-kW SiC Inverter with A Novel Printed Metal Power Module With Integrated Cooling Using Additive Manufacturing

With efforts to reduce the cost, size, and thermal management systems for the power electronics drivetrain in hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), wide band gap semiconductors including silicon carbide (SiC) have been identified as possibly being a partial solution. This paper focuses on the development of a 10-kW all SiC inverter using a high power density, integrated printed metal power module with integrated cooling using additive manufacturing techniques. This is the first ever heat sink printed for a power electronics application. About 50% of the inverter was built using additive manufacturing techniques.

Inverter↗

An Inverter Packaging Scheme for an Integrated Segmented Traction Drive System

The standard voltage source inverter (VSI), widely used in electric vehicle/hybrid electric vehicle (EV/HEV) traction drives, requires a bulky dc bus capacitor to absorb the large switching ripple currents and prevent them from shortening the battery s life. The dc bus capacitor presents a significant barrier to meeting inverter cost, volume, and weight requirements for mass production of affordable EVs/HEVs. The large ripple currents become even more problematic for the film capacitors (the capacitor technology of choice for EVs/HEVs) in high temperature environments as their ripple current handling capability decreases rapidly with rising temperatures. It is shown in previous work that segmenting the VSI based traction drive system can significantly decrease the ripple currents and thus the size of the dc bus capacitor. This paper presents an integrated packaging scheme to reduce the system cost of a segmented traction drive.

Su, Gui-Jia↗

Direct cooled power electronics substrate

The disclosure describes directly cooling a three-dimensional, direct metallization (DM) layer in a power electronics device. To enable sufficient cooling, coolant flow channels are formed within the ceramic substrate. The direct metallization layer (typically copper) may be bonded to the ceramic substrate, and semiconductor chips (such as IGBT and diodes) may be soldered or sintered onto the direct metallization layer to form a power electronics module. Multiple modules may be attached to cooling headers that provide in-flow and out-flow of coolant through the channels in the ceramic substrate. The modules and cooling header assembly are preferably sized to fit inside the core of a toroidal shaped capacitor.

Wiles, Randy H↗