Input DC-link Capacitor Design and Thermal Considerations for a Voltage Source Inverter Using the Approach of Switching Functions

Abstract

Switching function approach is a powerful and computationally efficient method to simulate a voltage source inverter. In this paper, we extend this idea to 1) design an input filter capacitor, 2) compute the power loss in switches and 3) investigate the thermal performance. This paper provides a simple approach to design an inverter and its auxiliary power components. In the inverter design flow, estimation of voltage, current behavior, input filter components and thermal characterization can be made with the proposed model in relatively lower time and computational effort compared to models built in sophisticated simulation software. An extra consideration was taken while selecting the input DC-link capacitor, taking the self-heating effect to the account. The thermal considerations for selecting a heat sink are also discussed in this paper. Developed models were compared with simulations created with dedicated software to further verify the accuracy of the results.