Reliability and Lifetime Optimal Control for Electric Vehicle Power Converters

Currently the large scale adoption of Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) is limited due to cost, reliability and lifetime considerations. The power converters, and more specifically their semiconductor switching devices, are the second most likely component to fail in a BEV because of the damage caused by the current-induced temperature cycling. In this letter we propose a novel hybrid frequency and time domain control approach that integrates time-domain performance requirements and frequency-domain reliability requirements, based on a frequency model of the damage. The method is applied to control the motor of a BEV and minimize the damage experienced by the power converter.