An improved POD-Galerkin method for rapid prediction of three-dimensional temperature field for an IGBT module

With the continuous improvement of power density and integration level of power devices, the temperature prediction of power devices becomes increasingly crucial for reliable operation and thermal management. Existing thermal analysis methods cannot meet the needs of fast and accurate calculation of detailed temperature fields. A novel three-dimensional fast prediction model of full temperature field for the Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) module is established based on the improved POD-Galerkin method. The reliability and performance of the proposed model are assessed via the comparison with the finite volume method (FVM) on four types of problems, including two steady-state problems with the first and third boundary conditions, respectively, and two unsteady-state problems with a fixed and variable power loss of chips, respectively. The perfect agreement between the results of the two methods confirms the accuracy of the proposed model, and the comparison of the calculation time shows its ability to greatly reduce the computation effort. The proposed model can obtain the detailed information on the whole temperature field of the IGBT module accurately in a much shorter time, which is significant for temperature and thermal stress monitoring and the development of its digital twinning technology.