This paper aims to assess the lifetime of a T-type active front end (AFE) converter in the context of Grid-to-Vehicle (G2V) and Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) applications providing various grid services. To achieve this goal, the research paper presents two G2V and three V2G profiles and measures the junction temperature oscillations for the entire mission profile. Then, the temperature profiles are imported into a reliability assessment model to determine each mission profile's impact on the system's reliability.

High voltage GaN power transistors can significantly improve the key performance indices of a power electronic converter in terms of efficiency, reliability and power density. This brings a potentiality for widespread adoption of these semiconductors in e-mobility applications such as on-board chargers (OBCs) in electric vehicles. According to literature surveys, among all semiconductor technologies GaN-based high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) devices are utilized to design compact, efficient and reliable OBCs. In this paper, a component-level (i.e., switch, capacitor and magnetics) optimization model is proposed based on Multi-objective Genetic Algorithm (MOGA) technique to assess the relationship between size (cm3), losses (W), and reliability (number of cycles) of the components used in OBCs. Besides, electrical circuit models establishing the relationship between these components for a dual-stage OBC architecture are presented. Finally, Pareto-front solutions for these components under the worst-case operation scenario are presented for the components used in the AC-DC stage of a bidirectional phase-modular three-phase OBC with a rated power of 11 kW.

In this paper, an advanced method for implementing active thermal control is proposed that can be helpful for smoothing repetitive junction temperature swing, which is one of the main reasons for wear-out failure in Wide bandgap (WBG)-based (i.e., SiC) power electronics converters (PEC). Utilizing current-source gate-drive, rise/fall (tON/tOFF) time during switching transition can be controlled, resulting in shaping switching losses in the form that can minimize junction temperature swings. The proposed method is implemented for an AC-DC converter and the simulation results validate the performance of the proposed method. It shows that by reducing junction temperature swing by 7°C, the lifetime of the PEC can be improved by a factor of 2.

Recently the majority of research in the field of predictive torque control (PTC) focuses on torque ripple and computational burden reduction.The main disadvantage of the traditional PTC strategy is the high computational time requirement, and it restricts the utilization of the PTC in automotive application.In this paper, a new PTC is used based on the modification of conventional PTC that reduces the computational time.At the same time, the modified PTC proposed in this paper reduces semiconductor losses and thermal stress.Moreover, a comparative analysis between conventional PTC and modified PTC has been conducted in terms of driving, electrical and thermal performance.It is found from a simulation study in MATLAB/Simulink® that the modified PTC reduces the switching loss by up to 20%, while the efficiency is increased by more than 5% compared to a conventional PTC.Finally, a reduction in the heatsink temperature response is also noticed during this assessment.

This paper compares the overall performance and reliability of modular and non-modular active front-end (AFE) rectifiers in electric vehicle (EV) charging applications, based on the high-fidelity electro-thermal modellling of the AFE rectifiers. The model contains the output characteristics of the SiC MOSFETs and their body diodes, the switching and conducting losses, as well as the effect of junction temperature, operating voltage, and currents. The Foster thermal network is used to estimate the SiC MOSFET junction temperature variation for both cases. A physics-of-failure-based reliability assessment tool is used to evaluate the component level reliability of the SiC MOSFETs based on the junction temperature, and the reliability of the DC link capacitor based on its voltage and temperature. Then the reliability of the converter is evaluated using a series reliability network for the non-modular and modular cases. The efficiency and performance of the systems are evaluated during a five-hour EV charging profile. During this time, the modular system shows an increase in efficiency of 5.3% and a decrease in the total harmonic distortion(THD) of the grid side currents by 71%. The MOSFET losses are reduced by 32%, and the filter losses by 51%. Moreover, in the modular case, the MOSFET junction temperature swings are three times smaller, and the maximum junction temperature is lowered by 7 degrees. This results in a significant increase in the component-level and system-level reliability in the modular case.