Design Tools for Rapid Multidomain Virtual Prototyping of Power Electronic Systems

The need for multidisciplinary virtual prototyping in power electronics has been well established, however, design tools capable of facilitating a rapid iterative virtual design process do not exist. A key challenge in developing such tools is identifying and developing modeling techniques which can account for 3-D geometrical design choices without unduly affecting simulation speed. This challenge has been addressed in this paper using model order reduction techniques and a prototype power electronic design tool incorporating these techniques is presented. A relevant electrothermal power module design example is then used to demonstrate the performance of the software and model order reduction techniques. Five design iterations can be evaluated, using 3-D inductive and thermal models, under typical operating and start-up conditions on a desktop PC in less than 15 min. The results are validated experimentally for both thermal and electrical domains.