A Multi-Disciplinary Virtual Prototyping Design Tool for Power Electronics

The structure for a design tool designed for power electronics is presented. It aims to allow automated and semi-automated design optimisation of the geometrical design of power electronic systems based on the results of an electrothermal simulation which accounts for the effects of design geometry on the electrical and thermal performance of the design. Model order reduction techniques are employed to allow rapid generation of small models for the multidisciplinary simulation. A prototype version of this design tool has been produced and its details of its implementation, its limitations and possible improvements for future work are discussed. A simple but representative design example is then presented and the performance of the design tool evaluated by comparison with experimental measurement.