Advanced condition monitoring system based on on-line semiconductor loss measurements

Abstract

This paper presents an FPGA-based on-line condition monitoring system integrated at gate-driver voltage level. The system uses the change of on-state voltage and thermal resistance as ageing indicators. The monitoring is realized by implementing an on-line semiconductor power loss measurement system for switching and on-state losses and a thermal model of the module. Apart from the concept, its practical implementation is described, and the experimental results are given

Power Electronics Reliability: State of the Art and Outlook

“…Degradation modeling is essential to predictive maintenance. The following two key challenges remain to be addressed: 1) Most condition monitoring methods are limited to a single type of component or an individual component [6,7,13], [105]. Nevertheless, at the application level, degradation could occur on multiple components concurrently.…”

Statistical Method of Estimating Semiconductor Switching Transition Time Enabling Condition Monitoring of Megawatt Converters

“…Typically, detecting the rise time of a single turn-off switching transition will require dedicated precision timing circuitry or ADCs with sample rates in hundreds of Mega Samples Per Second (MSPS) to acquire accuracy below 10 nano seconds (ns). Sample rates above 100 MSPS for monitoring of IGBTs was proposed in [45], but the complexity and cost of such circuitry is challenging for a CMU for large scale implementation in the field.…”

Active thermal control for delaying maintenance of power electronics converters

“…The concept of condition monitoring(CM) is applied to assess the current health status of a component in a system [9] . This allows for making a prediction about the reliability for the upcoming time of operation and to detect incipient faults in order to take corrective actions before failures occur.…”