Study of reliability-efficiency tradeoff of active thermal control for power electronic systems

摘要

Active thermal control for power modules can potentially extend the lifetime of the converter. This paper investigates the trade-off between the lifetime extension or de-rating and its cost due to the efficiency reduction. A short review on the existing approaches using control to reduce thermal stress of power modules is presented. Based on a given junction temperature profile, a method to evaluate the active thermal control's trade-off is presented. The concept is validated on a laboratory setup, where active thermal control is implemented by adapting the switching frequency. A discussion of the possible lifetime extension at the efficiency's expense is finally given. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).