Simulating the dynamic electrothermal behavior of power electronic circuits and systems

The simulator solves for the temperature distribution within the semiconductor devices, packages, and heat sinks (thermal network) as well as the currents and voltages within the electrical network. The thermal network is coupled to the electrical network through the electrothermal models for the semiconductor devices. The electrothermal semiconductor device models calculate the electrical characteristics based on the instantaneous value of the device silicon chip surface temperature and calculate the instantaneous power dissipated as heat within the device. The thermal network describes the flow of heat from the chip surface through the package and heat sink and thus determines the evolution of the chip surface temperature used by the semiconductor device models. The thermal component models for the device silicon chip, packages, and heat sinks are developed by discretizing the nonlinear heat diffusion equation and are represented in component form so that the thermal component models for various packages and heat sinks can be readily connected to one another to form the thermal network