Inverter design for future electrified aircraft propulsion systems under consideration of wear-out failure and random failure

Abstract

To reduce the wear-out effect and minimize the Single Event Burnout effect of the power semiconductor, several hardware design rules for inverters in electric aircraft propulsion systems are posed and implemented in this work. These strategies include scalable chip area and derated DC-link voltage. It is observed in a short-range reference aircraft case study that these rules could result in a conflict of objectives: reducing the risk of wear-out failure while simultaneously minimizing the risk of random failure. Therefore, it is recommended to consider random failures, wear-out failures, and their mutual impacts in a comprehensive analysis of system reliability. A reliabilityoriented design rule is proposed in this work.