Teaching thermal design of power electronic systems with web-based interactive educational software

For designing reliable power electronic systems it is essential to understand basic thermal issues like the stationary and transient relation of the power semiconductor losses the junction temperature and the application of thermal equivalent circuits. Also, thermal properties are of special importance in connection with further increasing the compactness of power converter systems. The aim of this paper is to give an introduction into the basic theory of heat energy conduction and thermal design which should serve as an addition to the Java applets compiled in a the iPES-Thermal, a module of the interactive educational software iPES which is freely available at www.ipes.ethz.ch and employed at the ETH Zurich for supporting an introductory course on power electronics.