A NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF THERMAL MANAGEMENT FOR HIGH POWER LED STREET LIGHTS

Burcu Cicek, Necmettin Sahin

Abstract: When power is applied to LEDs, the luminance reaction occurs and the energy in light form, which is also known as luminous flux, is released. In the reaction, only a part of the energy is converted into light flux and the remainder becomes heat. During the heat generation, the p-n connection point has the highest temperature in the device. The temperature at this point is called the junction temperature. Junction temperature in LEDs is a very crucial parameter. If the junction temperature exceeds the maximum permissible value, the LED will either fail or be damaged over time. As a result, improper thermal management causes the maximum operating temperature to be exceeded. In this study, a LED package was designed for street illumination. Thermal behaviours of the designed LED packages and integrated heat sinks and fins in various geometries are simulated by using the Ansys Fluent software. In addition, as a solution to the LED overheating problem, a heat sink with a cylindrical heat pipe was integrated to the LED package and the effect of thermal and geometric properties on thermal behaviour was numerically investigated.

Keywords: High-Power LEDs, Heat Pipe, Numerical Simulation, Thermal Management

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2018.0702007