Design strategy to optimize the reliability of power converters

This article presents a strategy, based on the design-of-experiments technique, aimed at optimizing the reliability in power converters. The process involves designing the converter several times, each time with a different set of specifications, Afterwards, the reliability for each design is calculated using a standard procedure. The specifications are established in a systematic manner in such a way that, through a variance analysis, the factors with the highest impact on the failure rate are easily identified. Once the most failure-prone components, and the dominant failure mechanisms are identified, the design can be modified to optimize the reliability. The strategy, although is computational intensive, is a cheaper and faster approach to reliability improvement than accelerated testing. The strategy is exemplified with a DC motor drive.