Electro-thermal modelling of multi chip power modules for high power converter application

In a compact power electronics systems such as converters, thermal interaction between components is inevitable. Traditional RC lumped modelling method does not take that into account and this would cause inaccuracy in the predicted temperature in the components of the systems. In this work, numerical simulation have been used to obtain detailed temperature distribution in power devices and the parameters for a Foster network behavior thermal model are extracted so that the thermal interaction can be accounted for and the model can be used to predict temperatures at all critical layers of the components. An ad-hoc conventional three-phase voltage source inverter (DC to AC converter) with a rating of 7.8 KW has been studied in this work as an example of the application of the proposed framework. The key component in the converter is a 75A11200V rated IGBT module. A power electronics circuit simulator is used to predict the power losses in the IGBT module and a Finite Element Analysis software is used to obtain the transient temperature profile in the module and the behaviour thermal model parameters are extracted using curve-fit approach. The resulting combined electro-thermal model is analysed using the circuit simulator again to obtain the temperature for various loading conditions. The results show that the proposed method can significantly improve the accuracy of predicted temperatures in the IGBT modules

Thermal analysis of Si-IGBT based power electronic modules in 50kW traction inverter application

Estimation of accurate IGBT junction temperature is crucial for reliability assessment. The well-known RC lumped approach can help predict junction temperature. However, this method suffers from inaccuracy while characterizing the thermal behaviour of several IGBT modules mounted to the liquid-cooled heatsink. Specifically, the thermal challenge originates from the thermal cross-coupling and module-to-module heat spreading and the converter cooling condition. This article demonstrates a methodology to study the impact of heat spreading, thermal interface material, and massive size liquid cold-plate on the overall thermal behaviour. A case study of 50 kW traction inverter is chosen to demonstrate the benefit of early assessment of electro-thermal simulation before making costly prototype design. Power loss is initially estimated using an analytical loss model and later the estimated power loss is used in FEA (Finite Element Analysis) thermal model. This paper also compares the performance of single-phase and two-phase liquid cooling and various thermal interface materials (TIM) to determine which type of cooling system and TIM is most suitable for real applications. Simulation results suggest that combination of two-phase liquid cooling and TIM can improve the thermal performance and reduce junction temperature by 4.5%, 4.2%, 4.6% for the traction power load 30 kW, 40 kW, and 50 kW, respectively. The proposed methodology can be used as useful reference guidance for thermal design and modelling of IGBT based power converter applications