Modeling of conduction and switching losses for IGBT and FWD based on SVPWM in automobile electric drives

Abstract

The modeling of conduction and switching losses for insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) and free-wheeling diodes (FWDs) in automobile applications is becoming increasingly important, especially for the improvement of the system efficiency and the reliability prediction. The traditional modeling of conduction and switching losses based on the space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM) is not applicable in practice due to the complex curve-fitting and the computation demands. In this paper, a simple and practical losses model for IGBTs and FWDs is proposed based on the SVPWM algorithm. Firstly, the traditional power losses model is introduced briefly. Then, the piecewise linear switching losses model and the conduction losses model based on the equivalent three-order harmonic model of the duty cycle are proposed. The comparison of experimental results between the traditional model and the proposed model is presented in the experiment validation. Furthermore, the power analyzer is adopted to measure the inverter losses, and the chips losses are further validated when other extra losses are considered. The proposed model shows good modeling accuracy with the large benefit of smaller measurement and lower computation requirements.