Mission-Profile-Based Lifetime Study for a SiC/IGBT Module in a Propulsion Inverter

Paper i proceeding, 2020

This work studies the lifetime of two silicon carbide
(SiC) and one silicon insulated gate bipolar transistor (Si-IGBT)
power modules in a three-phase propulsion inverter for two different driving cycles. The ECE-City manual and the Worldwide
Harmonized Light Vehicles Test Cycle (WLTC) are used as the
mission profiles for the lifetime comparisons. For the WLTC, the
urban and highway phases are included. The effect of blanking
time and the MOSFET’s reverse conduction is considered on
the power loss analysis. The lifetime versus different fluid rates
of the heatsink are also compared for the three modules over
the two mission profiles. The analysis shows that, the WLTC
drive cycle causes considerably larger accumulated damage on
the three compared modules’ devices, in comparison to ECECity manual. Moreover, its impact on the SiC-based devices is
higher compared to that of the Si-IGBTs. However, the SiC
modules present substantially higher lifetime, (>80%) for WLTC
and (>90%) for ECE-City manual, compared to Si-IGBTs. In
addition, it is observed that, a reasonable range of fluid flow
rate in the heatsink can play a considerable role in improving
or reducing the lifetime of the power devices in a reliability-wise
optimization.