Design for reliability and robustness tool platform for power electronic systems — Study case on motor drive applications

Because of the high cost of failure, the reliability performance of power semiconductor devices is becoming a more and more important and stringent factor in many energy conversion applications. Thus, the need for appropriate reliability analysis of the power electronics emerges. Due to its conventional approach, mainly based on failure statistics from the field, the reliability evaluation of the power devices is still a challenging task. In order to address the given problem, a MATLAB based reliability assessment tool has been developed. The Design for Reliability and Robustness (DfR <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> ) tool allows the user to easily investigate the reliability performance of the power electronic components (or sub-systems) under given input mission profiles and operating conditions. The main concept of the tool and its framework are introduced, highlighting the reliability assessment procedure for power semiconductor devices. Finally, a motor drive application is implemented and the reliability performance of the power devices is investigated with the help of the DfR <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> tool, and the resulting reliability metrics are presented.