Comprehensive Analytics for Reliability Evaluation of Conventional Isolated Multiswitch PWM DC–DC Converters

This article offers a holistic model and approach on reliability assessment of conventional isolated multiswitch pulsewidth modulation dc-dc (IMSDC-DC) power electronic converters with conventional half-bridge, full-bridge, and push-pull dc-dc topologies. The proposed reliability assessment analytics encapsulate correlated effects of several conditions (e.g., open- and short-circuit faults) and prevailing parameters (e.g., duty cycle, input voltage, output power, transformer turns ratio, voltage gain, switching frequency, operation time duration, and components characteristics) on the overall reliability performance of IMSDC-DC converters. Such insights are then harnessed within a Markov process to characterize and evaluate the mean time to failure reliability metrics for IMSDC-DC in both continuous and discontinuous conduction modes. Numerical results are followed with experimental verifications to demonstrate the self-embedded fault-tolerant capability of the IMSDC-DC topologies.