Reliability metrics extraction for power electronics converter stressed by thermal cycles

Due to the continuous demands for highly reliable and cost-effective power conversion, the quantified reliability performances of the power electronics converter are becoming emerging needs. The existing reliability modelling approaches for the power electronics converter mainly focuses on the predictions of lifetime, accumulated damage, constant failure rate or Mean-Time-To-Failure (MTTF), while the time-varying and probability-distributed characteristics of the reliability are rarely involved. In this paper, more complete metrics are introduced to quantify and characterize the reliability performance of power electronics system. The final predicted results showed good accuracy with much more reliability information compared to the existing approaches, and the quantified reliability correlation to the mission profiles of converter is mathematically established.