Junction temperature is the most important factor to induce the insulated gate bipolar transistor module failure and conduct operational management. In-situ calibrated method and junction temperature calculation model are proposed to timely indicate the junction temperature for the electric vehicle drive system. It aims to solve that the conventional calibration methods need to be calibrated in the temperature chamber and the model cannot meet variable current conditions, which ignores the effects of the stray parameters of electrode connection on the on-state voltage. A mathematical junction temperature estimation model based on the relationship between saturation voltage drop and different currents is established, whose accuracy depends on the prior narrow range junction temperature calibration. A control strategy for the in-situ calibration is proposed to generate an instantaneous large current by creating a zero-torque condition and using integrated negative temperature coefficient thermistors, current sensor, and on-state voltage measured circuit when the new-energy vehicle is in an idle state. Experimental results prove that the proposed in-situ calibration method can be realized totally inside the electric vehicle, which can serve the full-service lifetime of the electric vehicle with high precision.

Operational and health management for the reliability of power electronic converters requires sensitive condition monitoring and accurate estimation of the remaining lifetime. This study adds to the second aspect by examining the effects of failure locations on junction temperature profiles under different conditions. It is found that die-attach solder fatigue and direct bonding copper (DBC) solder fatigue, which occur frequently during the serving time, have different effects on thermal loads. This article investigates the dependence of thermal stress effects on failure locations and output electrical frequencies using finite-element models and proposes an updated strategy for the Cauer-type thermal model according to the failure location. Experimental results validate the proposed model. The remaining lifetime of the doubly fed induction generator converter is calculated under different health conditions and failure locations using a modified lifetime model. This article is intended for the health management of converter systems and is supposed to be in service reliably.

This article proposes a capacitor condition monitoring (CM) method for modular multilevel converter (MMC) in motor drive applications. The proposed method is based on wavelet decomposition of transient voltage signals, which is independent of modulation schemes and control strategies. The equivalent series resistance (ESR) change can be detected with a moderate computation requirement. Both simulation and experimental results have verified the performance of the proposed method.

Multichip IGBT module has been widely used in high-power converters. Detecting the status of the IGBT chip is a cost-effective approach to improving the reliability of power devices. This article proposes a novel method based on turn-off delay time to detect chip fault in multichip IGBT modules. First, the effect of chip failure on the turn-off process is analyzed, which causes a decrease in turn-off delay time. Then, a detection method of chip failure based on turn-off delay is proposed, which is validated by experimental results. Furthermore, the effects of chip failure on turn-off delay time in different working conditions are investigated through effective experimental results. The tested results show that the proposed method not only has high linearity and sensitivity to chip failure, but can also eliminate the influence of working environments on detection. The proposed method can be used to monitor the health status of multichip modules and is of great significance for enhancing operation reliability.

Bond wire lift-off will cause an increase of remaining wires’ power dissipation, which usually is ignored for healthy modules. However, only partial wires’ power dissipation transfers through thermal path from junction to case, which will lead to overestimate the whole power dissipation from collector to emitter pole and underestimate the calculated thermal resistance using the proportion of temperature difference to power dissipation. A FEM model is established to show the change of heat flow after bond wires were removed, the temperature of bond wires increases, and the measured thermal resistance decrease after bond wires lift-off. It is validated by experimental results using open package Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) modules under different current conditions. This conclusion might be helpful to indicate the bond wires lift-off and solder fatigue by comparing the change of measured thermal resistance. Using the Kelvin setup to measure thermal resistance will cause misjudgment of failure mode due to the ignoring of wires’ power dissipation. This paper proposed that the lift-off of bond wires will lead to underestimating the thermal resistance measurement, which will overestimate the lifetime of IGBT module and misjudge its state of health.

Bond wire lift-off is one of the major failure mechanisms in the insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) modules. Detecting the fault of bond wires is important to avoid the open-circuit fault of IGBT to ensure the reliable operation of power converters. In this paper, we propose a novel bond wire fatigue detection method for IGBT, which could be used in normal working conditions. Firstly, we investigated the dependence of bond wire fatigue on heatsink thermal resistance. An aging rate K was proposed to compare the measured thermal resistance with the initial value, which could indicate the bond wire fatigue. Then, this proposed method was verified by simulation and experimental results under different current levels. Finally, a power cycling test was used to show the aging process of the IGBT module, which shows the feasibility of proposed method.