Abstract: In pursuit of thermal control of the power control unit (PCU) for fuel cell vehicle (FCV), pin fin arrays are arranged at three high heat flux zones of the channel in the liquid-cooled cooling plate. In order to check the impact of fin configurations (such as diameter, height, fin pitch and shape) on the pressure drop and heat transfer capabilities, fifteen structure schemes are proposed and numerically investigated based on the same setup and boundary conditions. Details of flow and temperature distributions for each scheme at three high heat flux zones are obtained. References to evaluate the heat transfer enhancement (HTE) effectiveness and pressure drop augmentation of the fifteen schemes, contrast to scheme 0 of baseline channel without fin arrays, are respectively quantified as heat transfer intensity,  and pressure drop increment, . A performance evaluation factor (PEF) is proposed to assess the overall performance including heat transfer and pressure drop of cold plates with various the pin fin arrays. Thus, at high heat flux zone A, the best overall performance is provided by scheme 15 with elliptic fins. At the other two zones, scheme 12 performed better than the other schemes. All in all, scheme 12, with the biggest PEF among those of the fifteen schemes, is selected as the solution for the PCU’s cold plate.

Key words: Cold plate, Heat transfer enhancement (HTE), Liquid cooling, Power control unit (PCU)