This article gives an overview of the artificial intelligence (AI) applications for power electronic systems. The three distinctive life-cycle phases, design, control, and maintenance are correlated with one or more tasks to be addressed by AI, including optimization, classification, regression, and data structure exploration. The applications of four categories of AI are discussed, which are expert system, fuzzy logic, metaheuristic method, and machine learning. More than 500 publications have been reviewed to identify the common understandings, practical implementation challenges, and research opportunities in the application of AI for power electronics. This article is accompanied by an Excel file listing the relevant publications for statistical analytics.

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An Overview of Artificial Intelligence Applications for Power Electronics

The implementations of fuel cells (FCs) in the vehicle industry have gained great attention for the last few decades owing to simple utilization, silent operation, high efficiency and modular structure. Technological advancements show that the use of FCs in electric vehicles (EVs) will increase rapidly and cause a revolution, and will be an alternative to traditional vehicles in the future. Commercial vehicles, projects and research show that work is underway to ensure that FCEVs have sufficient performance advances for their daily transportation needs. However, the lack of a detailed study that will shed light on researchers working in this field is obvious. It aims to provide a comprehensive scientific publication on the current status and future expectations to engineers and researchers interested in this field. In the current study, numerous studies have been examined in detail and added as supplementary to the bibliography. In this context, FCEVs are classified under headings of configurations, systems components, control/management, technical challenges, marketing and future aspects. First of all, FC types and electric motors are discussed in terms of their application areas, characteristic properties and operating conditions. Power converters, which are voltage regulation and motor drive topologies used in FCEVs, are detailed according to the structural frequency of use, structure, and complexity. In the next sections, control issues for converters and technical challenges are branched for FCEVs. In final section, the current status and future aspects are reported using a large number of marketing and target data.

A review and research on fuel cell electric vehicles: Topologies, power electronic converters, energy management methods, technical challenges, marketing and future aspects

Capacitors are one type of reliability-critical components in power electronic systems. In the last two decades, many efforts in academic research have been devoted to the condition monitoring of capacitors to estimate their health status. Industry applications are demanding more reliable power electronics products with preventive maintenance. Nevertheless, most of the developed capacitor condition monitoring technologies are rarely adopted by industry due to the complexity, increased cost, and other relevant issues. An overview of the prior-art research in this area is therefore needed to justify the required resources and the corresponding performance of each key method. It serves to provide a guideline for industry to evaluate the available solutions by technology benchmarking, as well as to advance the academic research by discussing the history development and the future opportunities. Therefore, this paper first classifies the capacitor condition monitoring methods into three categories, then the respective technology evolution in the last two decades is summarized. Finally, the state-of-the-art research and the future opportunities targeting for industry applications are given.

A Review of the Condition Monitoring of Capacitors in Power Electronic Converters

Capacitors are widely used in dc links of power electronic converters to balance power, suppress voltage ripple, and store short-term energy. Condition monitoring (CM) of dc-link capacitors has great significance in enhancing the reliability of power converter systems. Over the past few years, many efforts have been made to realize CM of dc-link capacitors. This article gives an overview and a comprehensive comparative evaluation of them with emphasis on the application objectives, implementation methods, and monitoring accuracy when being used. First, the design procedure for the CM of capacitors is introduced. Second, the main capacitor parameters estimation principles are summarized. According to these principles, various possible CM methods are derived in a step-by-step manner. On this basis, a comprehensive review and comparison of CM schemes for different types of dc-link applications are provided. Finally, application recommendations and future research trends are presented.

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An Overview of Condition Monitoring Techniques for Capacitors in DC-Link Applications

This article proposes a health indicator estimation method based on the digital-twin concept aiming for condition monitoring of power electronic converters. The method is noninvasive, without additional hardware circuits, and calibration requirements. An application for a buck dc–dc converter is demonstrated with theoretical analyses, practical considerations, and experimental verifications. The digital replica of an experimental prototype is established, which includes the power stage, sampling circuit, and close-loop controller. Particle swarm optimization algorithm is applied to estimate the unknown circuit parameters of interest based on the incoming data from both the digital twin and the physical prototype. Cluster-data of the estimated health indicators under different testing conditions of the buck converter is analyzed and used for observing the degradation trends of key components, such as capacitor and MOSFET. The outcomes of this article serve as a key step for achieving noninvasive, cost-effective, and robust condition monitoring for power electronic converters.

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A Digital Twin Based Estimation Method for Health Indicators of DC–DC Converters

In power electronic systems, capacitor is one of the reliability critical components. Recently, the condition monitoring of capacitors to estimate their health status have been attracted by the academic research. Industry applications require more reliable power electronics products with preventive maintenances. However, the existing capacitor condition monitoring methods suffer from either increased hardware cost or low estimation accuracy, being the challenges to be adopted in industry applications. New development in condition monitoring technology with software solutions without extra hardware will reduce the cost, and therefore could be more promising for industry applications. A condition monitoring method based on Artificial Neural Network (ANN) algorithm is therefore proposed in this paper. The implementation of the ANN to the DC-link capacitor condition monitoring in a back-to-back converter is presented. The error analysis of the capacitance estimation is also given. The presented method enables a pure software based approach with high parameter estimation accuracy.

Condition monitoring for DC-link capacitors based on artificial neural network algorithm

Boost converters are needed in many applications that require the output voltage to be higher than the input voltage. Recently, boost type converters have been attracted by the industrial applications, and hence it has become an extremely hot topic of research. Recently, many researchers proposed the impedance source converters with their unique advantages as having a high voltage gain in a small range of duty cycle ratio. However, the thermal behaviour of the semiconductor devices and passive elements in the impedance source converter is an important issue from a reliability point of view and has not been investigated yet. Therefore this paper presents a comparison between the conventional boost, the Z-source, and the Y-source converters based on the thermal evaluation of semiconductors. In addition, the three topologies are also compared with respect to their efficiency. The operational principle, mathematical derivations, simulation results and finally conclusion comparisons are presented in this paper.

Thermal performance and efficiency investigation of conventional boost, Z-source and Y-source converters

Reliability is an important issue in the field of power electronics since most of the electrical energy is today processed by power electronics. In most of the electro-mobility applications, e.g. electric and hybrid-electric vehicles, power electronic are commonly used in very harsh environment. Temperature variations, vibration and also the stresses affecting the device (which can come even from the device itself or from external sources) and may cause unreliable system. Thus, designing reliable power electronic components is important for the aim of reducing the energy losses, maintenance cost and extending the service lifetime as well. Research within power electronics is of high interest as it has an important impact in the industry of the electro-mobility applications. According to the aforementioned explanations, this paper will provide an overview of the common factors (thermal cycles, power cycles, vibrations, voltage stress and current ripple stress) affecting the reliability of power electronics in electro-mobility applications. Also, the researchers perspective is summarized from 2001 to 2015.

A survey on the reliability of power electronics in electro-mobility applications

Boost converters are needed in many applications which require the output voltage to be higher than the input voltage. Recently, boost type converters have been applied for industrial applications, and hence it has become an interesting topic of research. Many researchers proposed different impedance source converters with their unique advantages as having a high voltage gain in a small range of duty cycle ratio. However, the thermal behaviour of the semiconductor devices and passive elements in the impedance source converter is an important issue from a reliability point of view and it has not been investigated yet. Therefore, this paper presents a comparison between the conventional boost, the Z-source, and the Y-source converters based on a thermal evaluation of the semiconductors. In addition, the three topologies are also compared with respect to their efficiency. In this study the results show that the boost converter has higher efficiency than the Zsource and Y-source converter for these specific voltage gain of 2 and 4. The operational principle, mathematical derivations, simulation results and final comparisons are presented in this paper.

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Analysis of loss distribution of Conventional Boost, Z-source and Y-source Converters for wide power and voltage range

The Y-source topology has a unique advantage of having high voltages gain with small shoot through duty cycles. Furthermore, having the advantage of high modulation index which increase the power density and improve the performance of the converter. In this paper, a collective thermal and efficiency investigation has been performed in order to improve the reliability of the converter. Evaluation of relevant losses as ( switching, conduction, capacitor ESR, core and winding losses ), and evaluation of the junction temperature of the devices  under 25 C ambient temperature. The analysis is done for  different voltage gain factors (2, 3, and 4), and different winding factor (4, and 5) using PLECS toolbox. The results shows that the higher the voltage gain and winding factor, the higher power losses and rising in the junction temperature of the device.

http://apc.aast.edu/ojs/index.php/RESD/article/download/01.2.300/71

Brwene Gadalla

Papers

Condition monitoring for DC-link capacitors based on artificial neural network algorithm

Thermal performance and efficiency investigation of conventional boost, Z-source and Y-source converters

A survey on the reliability of power electronics in electro-mobility applications

Analysis of loss distribution of Conventional Boost, Z-source and Y-source Converters for wide power and voltage range

Investigation of Efficiency and Thermal Performance of the Y-source Converters for a Wide Voltage Range