Transitioning to Physics-of-Failure as a Reliability Driver in Power Electronics

Power electronics has progressively gained important status in power generation, distribution and consumption. With more than 70% of electricity processed through power electronics, recent research endeavors to improve the reliability of power electronic systems to comply with more stringent constraints on cost, safety and availability in various applications. This paper serves to give an overview of the major aspects of reliability in power electronics and to address the future trends in this multidisciplinary research direction. The ongoing paradigm shift in reliability research is presented first. Then the three major aspects of power electronics reliability are discussed, respectively, which cover from physics-of-failure analysis of critical power elec-tronic components, state-of-the-art design for reliability process and robustness validation, and intelligent control and condition monitoring to achieve improved reliability under operation. Finally, the challenges and opportunities for achieving more reli-able power electronic systems in the future are discussed.