Power electronics converters (PECs) are responsible for efficiently converting electrical energy between power generators, storage systems and power consumers/loads. The PECs are subjected to complicated power loading factors throughout their operations and, thus, are proven to have issues regarding lifetime. Therefore, according to the original equipment manufacturers and suppliers, the reliability of the PECs is a key priority in order to be widely used and accepted in the industries. In this context, this review article aims to provide a comprehensive overview of reliability assessment strategies and testing protocols for ensuring the lifetime requirements of PECs. In addition, the paper conducts a thorough investigation of various strategies that are employed to enhance reliability during the design and useful life phase, including the analysis of different types of failure mechanisms, identification of factors contributing to failures, and assessment of techniques for estimating and regulating junction temperatures to prolong the lifetime of the system under real-life operating conditions. Furthermore, the article highlights the challenges encountered in monitoring and predicting component degradation and outlines the crucial steps for conducting a functional safety analysis. Particular emphasis is provided on summarizing the different accelerated aging tests for power electronics converters used in automotive applications, as these tests have yet to be fully covered in previous literature. This study provides an overview and guidelines for understanding the reliability of PECs and identifying potential areas for future research. Finally, the paper concludes most of the ongoing research and innovations in this area and provides insights into the future trends and challenges in enhancing the reliability of power electronics converters

A high demand for green and eco-friendly triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) has multiplied the importance of their degradability for biomedical applications. However, the charge generation of current eco-friendly TENGs is generally limited. In this research, a flexible TENG based on a silk fibroin (SF) fibrous layer and a polycaprolactone (PCL)/graphene oxide (GO) fibrous layer was developed. Moreover, the PCL/GO layer was surface modified using various concentrations of GO (0, 1.5, 3, 6, and 9 wt%). We demonstrated that surface modification using GO nanosheets significantly improved the output of the TENG. Notably, the optimized GO modified layer resulted in a voltage of 100 V, a current of 3.15 mA m − 2 , and a power density of 72 mW m − 2 . Moreover, a thin PCL layer applied as an encapsulation layer did not significantly modulate the performance of the TENG. Furthermore, during 28 d of soaking in a phosphate buffer solution, the proposed TENG was able to successfully generate electricity. The TENG was also proposed to be used for the electrical stimulation of PC12 cells. The results confirmed that this self-powered electrical stimulator could promote the attachment and proliferation of PC12 cells. Therefore, we have shown the potential for an eco-friendly and cost-effective TENG based on GO modified PCl/GO and silk fibrous layers to be used as a power source for biomedical applications.

The global promotion of electric vehicles (EVs) through various incentives has led to a significant increase in their sales. However, the prolonged charging duration remains a significant hindrance to the widespread adoption of these vehicles and the broader electrification of transportation. While DC-fast chargers have the potential to significantly reduce charging time, they also result in high power demands on the grid, which can lead to power quality issues and congestion. One solution to this problem is the integration of a battery energy storage system (BESS) to decrease peak power demand on the grid. This paper presents a review of the state-of-the-art use of DC-fast chargers coupled with a BESS. The focus of the paper is on industrial charger architectures and topologies. Additionally, this paper presents various reliability-oriented design methods, prognostic health monitoring techniques, and low-level/system-level control methods. Special emphasis is placed on strategies that can increase the lifetime of these systems. Finally, the paper concludes by discussing various cooling methods for power electronics and stationary/EV batteries.

In this paper, a new soft switching bridgeless single-phase power factor correction (PFC) converters is presented and analyzed. Employing an auxiliary switch, the input current dead angle that is the main drawback of the existing buck type PFCs, is omitted and thus, power factor (PF) is improved which is the main contribution of the paper. Proposed PFC converter operates under discontinuous conduction mode (DCM) and draws sinusoidal input current from power supply inherently. All switches and diodes are turned on and off under soft switching that lead to low switching losses and elimination of diode reverse recovery problems. Also, minimum numbers of semiconductor devices are in the power flow path that reduces the conduction losses. A 120W laboratory prototype is implemented and experimental results verify validity of theoretical analysis and show efficiency of 92.1%. In addition, total harmonic distortion (THD) of 3.3% is achieved and the input current harmonics complies with IEC61000-3-2 Class D requirements.

In this paper, a new soft-switching bridgeless single-phase power factor correction (PFC) converter is introduced and analyzed. Employing an auxiliary flyback circuit, existing dead angle in the input current is eliminated while soft-switching is achieved. The flyback converter processes only small amount of output power. Therefore, conduction losses of its bridge diode and semiconductor devices are low. Also, the auxiliary flyback converter provides soft-switching condition for buck switches. All semiconductors are turned ON and OFF under soft-switching condition. In addition to reduction of switching losses, diode reverse recovery problems are eliminated due to soft-switching condition. The proposed approach takes advantage of operating under discontinuous conduction mode (DCM) to shape the input current into sinusoidal form inherently. Experimental results are reported for a 120 W Prototype at 110 Vrms input and 48 V output. The results demonstrate efficiency of 93% at nominal load condition. Furthermore, the input current harmonics fulfill IEC61000-3-2 (Class D) standard .

Health degradation issues in automotive power electronics converter systems (PECs) are present due to repetitive thermomechanical stress endured while the vehicle is in real-field operation. This stress results from heat generation, a byproduct of semiconductor operation within PECs, leading to degradation in semiconductor operating life. The best practice in academia and industry is to rely on detailed Physics-of-Failure (PoF) based models for lifetime estimation. However, the PoF-based model of PECs requires substantial computational time and robust devices to estimate lifetime accurately. According to literature surveys, the computational time of the PoF-based models could be reduced further by using a low-fidelity and/or reduced-order model (ROM) that may result in unacceptable accuracy. To fulfill this research gap, this paper proposes a real-time executable, deep learning-based virtual sensing method that enables vehicle manufacturers to estimate the lifetime of the PECs onboard. This computationally efficient virtual sensing method has been integrated into an onboard vehicle validator edge (VVE). At the same time, multiple DL configurations are being explored, and optimization is performed on compositions, hyper-parameters, training, and testing datasets to obtain the best DL model. Finally, to demonstrate the feasibility and accuracy of the proposed method before its implementation within the complex VVE, an X-in-the-Loop (XiL) test is performed with vehicle frontloading.