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Reduce-Order Analysis and Circuit-Level Cost Function for the Numerical Optimization of Power Electronics Modules

Year: 2022 | Author: Mark Cairnie | Paper: H-S1.1
PEEC workflow
Fig.1. Reduced-order PEEC workflow for EM and thermal optimization
  The fast switching times and higher operating temperatures enabled by medium-voltage wide-bandgap power devices have forced package designers to employ innovative technologies to improve power densities, lower stray parasitics, and increase cooling capability. These new technologies ultimately require new simulation tools to allow for fast, efficient, and accurate computation of the multi-physics phenomena that govern package performance. To that end, this work proposes a multi-physics optimization workflow (Fig. 1) that uses reduced-order partial element equivalent circuit (PEEC) modelling to efficiently model the electromagnetic and thermal performance of power electronics packages.

  Employing reduced-order PEEC as the forward solver, as opposed to more conventional fi-nite element techniques, provides both decreased simulation time (up to 100x) as well as access to time domain simulation outputs of the package operating in a converter. This enables the de-signer to efficiently model the voltage and current transient stresses on the package during con-tinuous operation of the device and relate these stresses to the material and geometric design decisions. The addition of time-domain simulation results in the optimization allows for a wide range of possible cost functions that prioritize performance of the package in a converter.

  One such cost function is proposed in the work and demonstrated on a 10 kV/25 A discrete SiC MOSFET package with double-sided cooling (Fig. 2). The proposed cost function utilizes the time domain outputs of the reduced-order PEEC to optimize the position of the die in the pack-age based on the power noise spectrum emitted by the package during 100 kHz hard-switching. On standard desktop hardware, the optimal die position was determined in ~30 iterations of the optimizer at a rate of 15 min/iteration. During each iteration, a time-domain simulation electrical simulation (10 μs duration and 100,000 time steps) and a steady-state thermal simulation were completed. This work demonstrates both the reduction in computational time and the improved flexibility of power electronics package optimization enabled by reduced-order PEEC.

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