An innovative procedure for reliability assessment of power electronics equipped systems: a real case study

Suitable models, to be implemented and solved by means of appropriate software tools, are usually to be used in order to predict and assess the reliability related behaviour of a system. In this paper, the authors present a modelling procedure, based on the Monte Carlo method, for simulating the performances of a power electronics equipped system as a function of the reliability of its components. The core of the simulation is a representation of the system behaviour, in the presence of failures, in the state-space where transitions are driven by the events generated by the Monte Carlo reliability model of the basic elements. The results of a real case study, represented by a multivoltage vehicle for railway applications, are shown and discussed.