Performance and reliability of redundant thermoelectric coolers

The authors derived analytical solutions for thermoelectric coolers (TECs) with two-branch redundancy design, any number of open and short elements, and excess resistance. The model was used to predict the thermal performance of the TEC under high thermal load and compared with experimental data with good agreement. The inherent failure rate of both the series and two-branch redundant TECs were calculated. The latter was found to provide an approximately eight-times improvement in the expected failure rate. This improvement is necessary for a TEC to handle a high thermal load while meeting the reliability requirement of telecommunication systems