Temperature Control of High Power Electronic Devices at Minimum Ventilation Power

In the present work the cooling of a high power electronic device is studied. The device is in contact with a heat dissipator crossed by air. The air motion through the dissipator is forced by a fan whose supplied power is to be minimized. A finite element dynamic model of the dissipator is firstly created, taking geometrical and physical properties into account as well as steady state experimental data. A simplified model is then obtained, which reproduces the time pattern of the maximum dissipator temperature as a response of the thermal flux removed from the electronic device and of the mass flow rate of the air. Afterwords, the simplified model is utilized to build a control system which allows the electronic device to be correctly cooled at minimum air ventilation power during transition to steady states. Genetic algorithms are used to find the parameters of the models.l