Abstract
Power electronics technology is widely used in several areas, such as in the railways, automotive, electric vehicles, and renewable energy sectors. Some of these applications are safety critical, e.g., in the automotive domain. The heat produced by power devices must be efficiently dissipated to allow them to work within their operational thermal limits. Moreover, numerous ageing effects are due to thermal stress, which causes mechanical issues. Therefore, the reliability of a circuit depends on its dissipation system, even if it consists of a simple passive heatsink mounted on the power device. During the Printed Circuit Board (PCB) production, an incorrect assembly of the heatsink can cause a worse heat dissipation with a significant increase of the junction temperatures (Tj). In this paper, three possible test strategies are compared for testing the correct assembling of heatsinks. The considered strategies are used at the PCB end-manufacturing. The effectiveness of the different test methods considered is assessed on a case study corresponding to a Power Supply Unit (PSU).
Highlights
A relevant issue in power electronics applications is the management of the thermal aspects, i.e., the dissipation of the heat produced by any power device
The purpose of this section is to provide the reader with some basic information about the main defectstest occur during the assembly of the Printed Circuit Board (PCB), while the remaining 25% depend on electronic devices strategies implemented at the end-of-manufacturing in an industrial environment
The Power Supply Unit (PSU) we considered consists of three boost cells; each cell is composed of an inductor, a diode analog controller [28], which drives the three Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBTs) of the PSU
Summary
A relevant issue in power electronics applications is the management of the thermal aspects, i.e., the dissipation of the heat produced by any power device. The active heatsinks have a smaller physical volume and allow a greater dispersion of the heat produced by the power devices They are ineffective if the cooling fan or of the circulation pump do not work correctly. The test procedures considered have the target of checking the correct assembly of the heatsinks on the power devices, as discussed in [9,10]. The heatsink was assembled on the PCB and the effectiveness of the test procedures considered can beREVIEW influenced or inhibited by the PCB circuit, as discussed in this3paper.
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