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Coupled Transient Joule Heating & Thermoelastic Shock of Copper S-Busbar (TET10)
40-face B-Rep copper traction-inverter S-busbar with water-cooled terminal lugs and a slotted central neck solved on 4,107 quadratic TET10 elements under a 550 MW/m³ short-circuit Joule heating surge.
High-power traction inverter busbars experience intense volumetric Joule heating during fault currents and overload surges while their bolted terminal pads remain clamped to cold heat-sink plates. This 40-face B-Rep copper S-busbar (160 × 90 × 12 mm, R = 3.5 mm elbow fillets, R = 5 mm bolt holes, 26 × 8 mm central ventilation slot) is meshed with 4,107 quadratic TET10 elements (7,777 nodes). Over a 4.0 s overload pulse (Q = 5.5e8 W/m³), the slotted neck heats from 20 °C to 644.8 °C while cold-plate conduction holds the bolted lugs near 210–225 °C, driving severe S-bend lateral bowing and 1,658 MPa thermal stress.
1. Geometry & FEA Mesh
- •3D B-Rep CAD solid (inverter_busbar.step, 40 CAD faces, 114 edges, volume 62.42 cm³).
- •2nd-order curved tetrahedral mesh: 4,107 TET10 elements, 7,777 nodes (23,331 structural DOFs + 7,777 thermal DOFs), 0.2% volume deviation vs exact CAD.
- •C11000 electrolytic copper (E = 115 GPa, ν = 0.34, ρ = 8,960 kg/m³, α = 1.7e-5 K⁻¹, κ = 380 W/(m·K), cp = 385 J/(kg·K)).
2. Loads & Boundary Conditions
- •Cylindrical bolt bores (surface number 65, 35) and terminal end faces (surface number 64, 32) structurally fixed and thermally clamped at T = 20 °C ( together with terminal bosses surface number 66, 29).
- •Free-air & forced-air convection h = 45 W/(m²·K) at T∞ = 20 °C on broad top and bottom faces (surface number 31, 33).
- •Volumetric Joule heat generation Q = 5.5e8 W/m³ across the copper busbar body.
3. Simulation Results & Findings
- ✓Neck hotspot temperature rises from 20.0 °C to 644.84 °C over 4.0 s (ΔT_max = 624.84 K), forming a steep spatial thermal gradient toward the cooled lugs (210.4 °C / 225.0 °C).
- ✓Restrained thermal expansion drives lateral S-bend deflection |u|_max = 0.5916 mm and peak von Mises stress σ_vm = 1,658.23 MPa at the inner elbow fillets and slot corners.
- ✓All 21 coupled thermal and structural time frames are embedded in the .wce project bundle.
WebCAE's native coupled transient thermoelastic solver on curved TET10 meshes enables power-electronics engineers to evaluate busbar hotspot temperatures, thermal expansion forces on IGBT/SiC terminals, and low-cycle thermal fatigue.
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