A power converter is an integral part of most consumer and industrial products needing electric power. Various segments such as upcoming all-electric aircraft industry, existing motor drive market, space mission, electric automotive, health sector, renewable energy market, high voltage direct current (HVDC) substation and many others require the use of power converters. Power semiconductor modules are indispensable elements in any power conversion system, especially where heavy but critical power is required. Unfortunately, these power semiconductor modules are failure-prone and when they fail, results can be catastrophic. When thermal and electrical stress factors are subjected to large power semiconductor modules, natural degradation takes place, which eventually degrades their performance and leads to failures even before their expected lifespan, thus bringing down the system and cause economic, safety, and environmental problems. Finding the remaining life of a power converter is the ultimate objective to ensure uninterrupted operation of a power electronic system. Using the proposed methods, any power electronic application requiring heavy but critical power will be benefitted. This project will significantly help the manufacturers and end users to increase the system reliability by deploying a self-monitoring system that can be applied to the existing insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) and metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) module packaging. This solution can also provide real-time alarms to identify device’s changing health conditions, broaden the existing knowledge of the degradation/failure process and predict remaining useful life. Establishing such an advanced reliability framework will lead to a new real-time health monitoring tool, which will benefit any power electronic application with high power ratings. This project aims to find a comprehensive solution to determine the real-time state of health and remaining life of a power semiconductor module using online in-situ, non-invasive technique based on ultrasound resonators and the knowledge of dynamic safe operating area (SOA). Two research outcomes contribute to this goal: The first part determines the level of aging using embedded ultrasound sensors, which will be live and non-intrusive in nature, and can be applied to existing IGBT and MOSFET module packaging. For the first time, sympathetic string theory will be used to associate ultrasound with device degradation. The second part introduces the concept of age depended SOA, which is believed to be the underlying reason for device failure especially when the device is subjected to accidental over voltage/current. In short, the project envisions that device degradation can be estimated by accomplishing an accurate online degradation monitoring tool, which will determine the dynamic SOA. The correlation between aging and dynamic SOA provides the useful remaining life of the device or the availability of a circuit. Therefore, this research will provide an integrated framework enabling autonomous health assessment for power electronic converter systems, and the outcome of this project will significantly improve the lifespan of the power converters by performing preventive scheduled maintenance, which will eventually lead to increased system availability and reduced cost.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
