IGBT device health monitoring-testing hardware based circuit design to support health monitoring

Power Electronics is an advanced technology and it plays a critical and vital role in the establishment of Eco-friendly environment. Electricity is one best invention by Human kind for the betterment of life. So now, we are in a situation that world cannot exist without Electric Power. So it becomes essential that this electric power has to be transferred from one place to the other. Power converter is an electrical device that converts electrical energy. Power inverters convert DC to AC. Switch is one of the important components of converters and inverters. This switch has to be controllable one to control the flow of power. IGBT is one main device that is used as a switch for its flexibility and fast switching characteristics. So the reliability of the power converters or inverters solely depends on the reliability of IGBT power module. Therefore, an online technique has to be developed to monitor the heath of IGBTs and freewheeling diodes inside the power module. This technique constantly monitors the system and if it finds anything suspicious, it will give us a warning before the fault can happen. Freewheeling diodes inside the power module are easily prone to damage. In this thesis, reverse recovery characteristics of IGBT diodes are analysed and the IGBT is thermally degraded using Thermal cycling technique and the IGBT diode reverse recovery degradation is analysed and compared for the better analysis.Master of Science (Power Engineering