Thermal feedback blocks for fast and reliable electrothermal circuit simulation of power circuits at module level

Thermal Feedback Blocks are a viable approach to perform thermal and electrothermal simulations of electronics systems with very fast-switching inputs, for which the coupling of a finite-element method thermal solver with a physics-based or a circuit simulator cannot be used. In this work, we describe a RC-based thermal network improving the conventional Foster and Cauer solutions, which is used to perform (i) an accurate and effective dynamic thermal analysis of an IGBT power module, and (ii) a fast electrothermal analysis of the aforementioned module used as a half-bridge DC-AC power converter in both normal operating mode and during a load short-circuit event. © 2016 IEEE