Online Health Monitoring of the Electrolytic Capacitor in DC-DC Converters

Electrolytic capacitor is widely used in DC-DC converter as filter capacitor, but it has higher failure rate than other components in DC-DC converter. In order to monitor the health of the electrolytic capacitor, the equivalent series resistance (ESR) is selected as monitoring target. This paper propose a novel method to monitor the rising equivalent series resistance to predict the failure of electrolytic capacitor. The proposed method has the advantage at low cost and high ratability that can easily integrated in DC-DC converter. The simulation results are given to verify the merits of the proposed method.