Title: Immersion Cooled Power Electronic Converters – Modeling, Simulation, and Testing Validations
Abstract: Thermal management plays a critical role in the performance of power electronic converters, which is closely related to the efficiency, power density, reliability, and cost of the overall power converter systems. Immersion cooling, as an emerging thermal management approach for power electronics, has received increasing attention in recent years, across numerous industry sectors, such as data center, electrified transportation, energy storage, and many others. Immersion cooling enables dramatic enhancement not only on thermal management, but also on dielectric insulation, especially for high-voltage power converter systems. In this tutorial, the concept of immersion cooling for power electronics will be introduced, followed by multi-physics modeling, simulation, and testing validation of various power converters, based on the speakers’ recent research outcome from an industry-sponsored project.
Biographies:
Dr. JiangBiao He is an Associate Professor with CURENT and the Min H. Kao Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK). Before joining UTK in 2024, he was an Associate Professor at the University of Kentucky. Previously, he worked in multiple industry R&D centers, most recently as a Lead Engineer at GE Global Research in Niskayuna, NY. Prior to joining GE in 2015, He was employed by Rockwell Automation as a power hardware engineer. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Marquette University.
Dr. He’s research interests include power electronic converters and motor-drive systems for broad emerging applications, including transportation electrifications, renewable energies, and others. At GE, he was a lead engineer on the development of the first-ever MW-scale propulsion drive for hybrid-electric aircraft demonstration in the global aviation area. He also worked on power converter reliability improvement for the 12-MW GE Haliade-X offshore wind turbine system design, the then largest wind turbine in the world. He has received multiple professional achievement awards in both industries and academia. He is the author/coauthor of over 150 technical articles, one textbook, and 10 U.S. patents.
Dr. Reza Ilka is a Research Associate with CURENT and the Min H. Kao Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK). He received the first Ph.D. degree in power engineering from Semnan University, Iran, in 2018, and his second Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering with the University of Kentucky, focusing on the multi-physics modeling, analysis, design, and optimization of electromagnetic components and power electronic converters. He was an Electromagnetic Design Engineer with the R&D Division of MAPNA Group for five years. He has published over 20 peer-reviewed articles in various journal and conferences and has multiple pending patents.