A systematic design approach to thermal-electrical power electronics integration

With the growing demand for integration density of power electronic systems, efficient multi-domain simulations are becoming indispensable design tools. This paper therefore presents a systematic simulation approach for coupled thermal-electrical design of power modules and systems. The presented solution is based on coupled thermal-electrical equivalent circuits and consists of optimized algorithms for accelerating the simulations by orders of magnitude, while keeping the required accuracy. With this type of simulation, load cycles for complete mission profiles can be computed and used for thermal management, reliability and lifetime estimations of power electronic systems.