Reliability assesment in the design of interleaved converters under multi-physical constraints

This paper presents the integration of the reliability assessment in a pre-design approach of interleaved converters for embedded automotive applications. This approach is based on a multi-physic optimization to pre-size the entire converter and its components. The design constraints are progressively integrated, in addition the reliability aspect of power components is considered in the early steps of the design. The proposed method is applied to an Interleaved Buck Converter IBC. It allows to pre-size converter determining the optimal number of cells under multi-physics constraints such as electric, efficiency, thermal, volume and in particularly the reliability, which is considered in same level of pre-design to eliminate all risk of feasibility. This paper describes the reliability assessment approach of the converter using the FIDES methodology for components reliability. Therefore, this approach takes account of mission profile associated with operating conditions to assess the lifetime of power converter.