Lifetime Estimation of Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor Modules Using Two-Step Bayesian Estimation

The reliability of the package of insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) modules has been of great concern. Some fatigue-related failure mechanisms are commonly observed under power cycling conditions. An approach of a multi-step Bayesian estimation is proposed to perform lifetime estimation of IGBT modules under power cycling conditions. Lifetime estimation of a generic IGBT module under the specified power cycling conditions is performed to demonstrate the proposed approach, by integrating the extrapolated lifetime data from the literature, as well as the finite element analysis results. The result of estimation is that the lifetime of the studied IGBT module can be approximated by a two-parameter Weibull distribution with α = 16 126 and β = 3.28. The proposed approach is relatively straightforward to implement and can be used to perform preliminary lifetime estimations in a wide variety of applications.