Advanced design tools for the lifetime of power electronics - study case on motor drive application

In many important energy conversion systems, the power electronic converters are proven to have high failure rates. At the same time, the failures of the power electronics systems are becoming more and more unacceptable because of the high cost of failures. As a consequence, an appropriate assessment of reliability performance for the power electronics is a crucial and emerging need, because it is the essential information for the reliability improvements, and thus reduction of the cost-of-energy. Unfortunately, there is still lack of suitable tools for the reliability assessment in power electronics. In this paper, an advanced design tool structure, which can acquire various reliability metrics of the power electronics, is proposed. The proposed design tool is based on the failure mechanisms in the critical components of the power electronics, and the mission profiles in the converter applications are also taken into account. Finally, a new evaluation and design example are demonstrated on a motor drive application.