Estimating Power Module Lifetime with a Driving Schedule to Determine Effectiveness of Module Packaging Technologies

A simple method to estimate the effect of power module or power device selection on the lifetime of an electric vehicle inverter is proposed and sample results are shown in this paper. It is relatively difficult to compare performance or cost and how they pertain directly to the lifetime but this method is able to give insight into their effects on the expected lifetime by comparing the losses in discrete events and the lifetime curves of the module to make a rain flow model. The result is a rough estimate of the expected lifetime to observe differences of potential order-of-magnitude differences in lifetime.