New system integration concept for high power density drives

Abstract

Current construction technology and design methods of power converters have reached power density limits that can only be surpassed by changing the way we design and build converters. This paper presents a system integration approach that allows for achieving high power densities. The key issues of the approach, namely hybrid integration in the form of integrated power electronics modules (IPEMs) and integrated thermal and spatial design with optimized air flow are presented in the paper.The spatial and thermal concept of a case study 2.2kW converter for ac drives is presented and the technologies for implementing the IPEMs are listed. The complete system and the experimental results thereof are presented. The converter has a power density of 3.8 kW/l, which is almost four times larger than that of commercially available drives. The approach is not restricted to this application and can be applied to any converter in the medium power range.

Power Sandwich: An integration technology for manufacturability

“…15: Heat removal from industrial drive, CFD simulations of forced convection with two heat exhaust channels system is 4.2kW/l which is 4.2 times higher compared to the commercial benchmark. The power density is significantly improved as result of utilizing sandwich SMT high density packaging while compared to the previous work [3] the assembly is simplified with number of PCBs reduced to 4.…”

“…The technology demonstrator achieved a power density of 4kW/l which translates into the volume reduction to 25% compared to the state-ofthe-art commercial drives. This was accomplished through two concepts: advanced thermal management design and hybrid integration in the form of integrated power electronic modules (IPEMs) [3]. The main shortcoming of the demonstrated prototype is its fairly complicated assembly, primarily due to a large number of PCBs (11 in total) and numerous interconnections between the IPEMs.…”

“…The Power Sandwich building concept is applied to the same industrial drive as in [3] and is illustrated in the form of virtual prototypes. Fig.…”

“…12 shows the topology of 2.2kW industrial drive to be implemented in Power Sandwich. The topology is based is based on the two stage EMI filter topology that has been presented in [3]. The industrial drive consists of: 1) Front EMI filter, 2) Bridge rectifier, 3) DC bus EMI filter and 4) 3-phase inverter stage.…”

“…In some commercially available power converters (i.e. AC drives) as high as 60% of the total converter volume can be occupied by air and heat sinks [3]. To effectively reduce the amount of enclosed air, 3D packaging of components has been proposed in [4], where a flexible PCB substrate allows for 3D spatial layout.…”