A Thermal Model of a Forced-Cooled Heat Sink for Transient Temperature Calculations Employing a Circuit Simulator

Power semiconductors can be modeled as a thermal network of resistors and capacitors. The thermal boundary condition of such a model is typically defined as the heat sink surface temperature which is assumed to be constant. In reality, the heat sink surface temperature underneath the power module is not exactly known. In this paper we show how to set up a thermal model of the heat sink in form of a RC thermal equivalent network that can be directly embedded in any circuit simulator. The proposed thermal heat sink model takes into account convection cooling, thermal hotspots on the heat sink base plate, thermal time constants of the heat sink, and thermal coupling between different power modules mounted onto the heat sink. Experimental results are given and show high accuracy of the heat sink model with temperature errors below 10%.