Condition Monitoring Power Electronics for Reliability (COMPERE)

电力电子变换器是许多在不确定和恶劣环境中工作的安全关键、高可靠性电气系统的关键元件。例子包括航空航天电源和伺服转换器，船舶推进和牵引驱动器，以及海上可再生能源发电机系统。实现高转换器可靠性的传统方法是降低半导体器件的额定值并在系统配置中包括冗余。这些方法可以增加转换器的平均故障间隔时间，但不会防止灾难性故障的发生。本研究的目的是开发一种新的方法来监测转换器设备的退化在一段时间内，并提供预测故障发生之前的能力。该研究将解决执行和理解关键测量结果的挑战，以获得有关实时操作条件下半导体器件内部状态的信息。将研究导致器件老化和失效的机制，并建立器件条件与其终端特性之间的关系。状态监测技术将基于转换器端子电信号，这些电信号与转换器系统的热状态和负载状态的信息一起被解释。将在热、低频和高频电领域进行实验、计算机建模和模拟，以开发状态监测技术。研究结果对设备制造商、电力电子转换器制造商以及此类系统的最终用户，特别是在关键应用中，都具有重要价值。

Power Electronic Converters are key elements in many safety-critical, high-reliability, electrical systems working in uncertain and harsh environments. Examples include aerospace power supplies and servo converters, marine propulsion and traction drives, and offshore renewable energy generator systems. The traditional approaches to achieve high converter reliability are to de-rate the semiconductor devices and to include redundancy in the system configuration. These approaches can increase the Mean Time Between Failures of converters but will not prevent a catastrophic failure from happening. The aim of this research is to develop a new approach of monitoring the converter device degradation over a period of time and provide the ability to predict failures before they happen. The research will address the challenges of carrying out and understanding the results of key measurements in order to derive information about the internal state of the semiconductor devices in real-time operating conditions. The mechanisms leading to the aging and failure of the devices will be investigated, and a relationship between the device condition and its terminal characteristics established. Condition monitoring techniques will be based on converter terminal electrical signals, which are interpreted together with information about the thermal and load conditions of the converter system. Experiment, and computer modelling and simulation in the thermal, low frequency and high frequency electrical domains will be carried out to develop the condition monitoring techniques. The results will be valuable to device manufacturers, manufacturers of power electronic converters, and to the end users of such systems, particularly in critical applications.