Autonomous Thermo-Mechanical Co-Design of Embedded Liquid-Cooling Structures for High-Power Mobility Platforms: A Systematic Review
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Abstract
For electric traction inverters and onboard electronics that adopt wide-bandgap switches, bus bars and capacitors to increasingly shrink packages, embedded liquid-cooling structures are a key enabler for power density. Based on 20 peer-reviewed papers published from 2005 to 2025, this systematic review aims to explore the merging of autonomous, optimization-based design approaches with thermo-mechanical requirements for these structures. The corpus was coded on the basis of considering the following aspects: physics fidelity, design representation, optimization algorithm, validation route and application context. Combined with adjoint sensitivity analysis, pseudo-three-dimensional reduced-order models and extensions to the adjoint model for transient and turbulent flow, the density-based topology optimization with Brinkman penalization will emerge as the predominant autonomous design engine. Results indicate that the optimised fin array reduced pressure loss by almost 53.6% compared with circular fins, the pseudo-three dimensional heat sink lowered the thermal resistance by up to 13.6% compared with optimised size parallel fin, the transient design reduced the pumping power by 66.7% and the hybrid topology-microchannel cold plate reduced the peak chip temperature by 4.28K with a pressure drop of 319.42Pa. Traditional cooling technology uses 14% to 33% of the traction-inverter volume, making it evident that the value of compact, co-designed structures is high. There are still some structural compliance, thermal-cycling fatigue, manufacturability in optimization loops and limitation in treatment. A co-design framework with closed loop coupling is proposed to guide future development: mission profiles, reduced order solvers, adjoint updates and experimental verification.
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