A novel cooling geometry for subsea variable speed drives

Lucas A. Militão, Caio D. Fernandes, Diego dos Santos, Douglas M. Machado, Marcelo L. Heldwein, Carlos R. Rambo, Alexandre K. da Silva, Jader R. Barbosa

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

Experimental and theoretical analyses are conducted to evaluate the passive cooling performance of a novel geometry for subsea variable speed drives, a common piece of equipment in deep-sea oil exploration. Relying on the sea water as a low-temperature thermal reservoir, the new design forms an enclosed, annular space with centrally located modular boards that compose the power electronics inverter. Buoyancy-induced motion of a dielectric coolant conveys the heat dissipated by the electronic boards to the sea water through the outer and innermost walls of the annular enclosure. A thermal network model is implemented and used to optimize the enclosure geometry through a genetic algorithm, which served as a reference for a scaled experimental setup. A Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation of the conjugate heat transfer yielded temperature distributions on the electronic boards and temperature and fluid velocity fields inside the enclosure. A comparison between the experimental data and the modeling results indicated a good agreement, with average RMS deviations of a modified Nusselt number of 7.0% and 8.5% for the thermal network and CFD analysis, respectively. For a 140-W operating point dissipation rate in the scaled test setup, the thermal network and the CFD models presented maximal deviations of 4°C and 2.3°C with respect to the heat sink temperature measurements.

Original languageEnglish
Article number116483
JournalApplied Thermal Engineering
Volume185
DOIs
StatePublished - 25 Feb 2021
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Deep-sea oil exploration
  • Equivalent thermal network
  • Frequency inverter
  • Heat transfer augmentation
  • Thermal management

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'A novel cooling geometry for subsea variable speed drives'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this