Today, power electronic reliability is a main subject of interest for many companies and laboratories. The main process leading to the IGBT failure is the cycling thermal stress. Indeed the current flow induce local heating and then mechanical stress. This paper deals with electro thermal stress under steady and transient current states. The main objective is to test bonded wires with active current cycle. Consequently, the thermo mechanical stress is obtained. A numerical 3D finite element model is presented and some experimental results are given. Indeed an infrared system monitors the temperature dispatching from an experimental test bench under active current cycle. The overall study is a first step before a global simulation (electrical thermal-mechanical) in order to optimize some geometric parameters of the packaging
