VHDL-AMS Thermo-Mechanical Model for Coupled Analysis of Power Module Degradation in Circuit Simulation Environments

This work proposes the development of a simplified thermo-mechanical model suitable for coupling with device physics and a 3D electrothermal model in line with the creation of a comprehensive framework for circuit simulation of multidomain problems. Commercially available numerical analysis software are capable of showing thermo-mechanical effects but lack real-time feedback between domains and require sophisticated CAD/meshing. Here, we show a ID mechanical model coupled to a thermal model which is capable of generating accurate mechanical Strain and stress values of a power assembly while optimizing the tradeoff with computational efficiency. The thermo-mechanical model was created in VHDL-AMS language because of the multi-domain capability of VHDL-AMS.