Development of Electrothermal Models for Electrical Traction

Abstract

In this paper, improved electrothermal models of the power diode and IGBT have been developed. The main local physical effects have been considered. The proposed models are able to deal with electrical and thermal effects. The models were confirmed by comparison with other models having similar characteristics for different circuits and different temperatures. The developed models are implemented in a traction unit to study the electrothermal performance in an electric vehicle system. The models were implemented in the Pspice circuit simulation platform using standard Pspice components and analog behavior modeling (ABM) blocks. The switching performance of the diode and the IGBT have been studied under the influence of different circuit elements in order to study and estimate the on-state and switching losses pre-required for the design of various topologies of converters and inverters. The comparison shows that these models are simple, configurable with the electrical circuit simulator software. They are better able to predict the main circuit parameters needed for power electronics design. Transient thermal responses have been demonstrated for single pulse and repetition modes. The obtained results show that our model is suitable for a fully electrothermal use of power electronic circuit simulations.