No abstract

A technology based on thyristors will be used to manufacture the super-conducting coil AC/DC converters because of the low ratio of cost over installed power compared to a design based on GTO or similar technology. But phase-controlled converter suffers from fundamental disadvantage. They inject current harmonics into the input ac mains due to their nonlinear characteristics, thereby distort the supply voltage waveform, and demand reactive power from the associated ac power system at retarded angles. To overcome this disadvantage, in the case of two series converters at the DC side, connected to the same step-down transformer, apply for the sequence control. It is the most simple and efficient way to reduce the reactive power consumption at low cost. Analytical sequence control algorithm is suggested, the validity of the proposed scheme has been verified by experimental results with the small-scaled International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) Power Supply to minimize reactive power consumption.

No abstract

This paper presents a reliability study of a directly cooled and an indirectly cooled IGBT module after a test drive of 85.000 Km in a fuel cell electric vehicle. In this case, the car was mainly driven on highway, only a minor part of the distance was driven in urban areas.At the end of the test drive, the power control unit was disassembled and analyzed with regard to the lifetime consumption. First, electrical measurements were carried out and the results were compared with the ones obtained directly after module production (End of Line test). After that, ultrasonic microscopy was performed in order to investigate any delamination in the solder layers. As a third step, an optical inspection was performed to monitor damages in the housing, formation of cracks or degradation of wire bonds. The results show none of the depicted failure modes could be found on the tested power modules after the field test. Obviously, no significant life time consumption could be observed.