Closing the Loop between Circuit and Thermal Simulation: A System Level Co-Simulation for Loss Related Electro-Thermal Interactions

Thermal management becomes critical as loss-related component parameters become more highly temperature dependent. Although thermal simulation based on component losses is common, this work proposes closing the loop between electrical and thermal simulations with a transient system-level approach; enabling temperature dependent component parameters during circuit simulation. For a boost converter, the overall system efficiency and component losses are estimated by combining circuit simulation with the corresponding temperature distribution calculated with transient 3D-FVM. Simulations demonstrate how the overall system efficiency is influenced by the component temperature, especially during transient processes e.g. the system start up. Using the proposed co-simulation approach the temperature on one semiconductor surface could be estimated with good accordance to measured temperatures (+3.1 %/2.68 °C) during 60 s of transient start up.