Real-time system for monitoring the electro-thermal behaviour of power electronic devices used in boost converters

•Real-time system for monitoring IGBT's electro-thermal behaviour was established.•dSPACE based monitoring system interfaced to real-time measurements was developed.•The model comprises 2 layers, mathematical for predicting power loss and finite element for heat estimation.•System's performance was assessed using operational boost converters.•The outcome is accurate and cost effective tool compared to thermal imaging based monitoring schemes.

Reliability of power electronic devices (PEDs) is a key issue to secure power supplies in modern word, especially, those generated from renewable energy sources. Thermal stress due to switching frequency and environmental conditions are commonest cause of currently unsatisfactory PEDs reliability scores.In this paper, the electro thermal performance of PEDs and related parameters are critically investigated using three types of differently manufactured insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs). Namely, punch through (PT), non-punch through (NPT) and field stop (FS) silicon trench gate technologies.First, currents and voltages of the examined IGBTs were measured under different operating temperatures, switching frequencies and electrical loading conditions.Second, power losses of the examined devices were calculated, in real time, based on their measured currents and voltages using realistic mathematical model embedded in a dSPACE system. Subsequently, the power losses for each device were used as an input to a finite element model to graphically predict heat distributions for each of the monitored devices.Compared to expensive measurements taken by high-resolution thermal imaging cameras, the accuracy of the developed system achieved 97%. The obtained results demonstrate the developed model would serve as an inexpensive and powerful tool for monitoring PEDs thermal conditions.