http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/5610941/5624686/05624745.pdf

Power electronics

An overview of time-based and condition-based maintenance in industrial application

There has been a growing interest in monitoring the ongoing "health" of products and systems in order to predict failures and provide warning to avoid catastrophic failure. Here, health is defined as the extent of degradation or deviation from an expected normal condition. While the application of health monitoring, also referred to as prognostics, is well established for assessment of mechanical systems, this is not the case for electronic systems. However, electronic systems are integral to the functionality of most systems today, and their reliability is often critical for system reliability. This paper presents the state-of-practice and the current state-of-research in the area of electronics prognostics and health management. Four current approaches include built-in-test (BIT), use of fuses and canary devices, monitoring and reasoning of failure precursors, and modeling accumulated damage based on measured life-cycle loads. Examples are provided for these different approaches, and the implementation challenges are discussed.

/pdf/prognostics-and-health-management-of-electronics-46ggsuwf7q.pdf

Prognostics and health management of electronics

With wide-spread application of power electronic systems across many different industries, their reliability is being studied extensively. This paper presents a comprehensive review of reliability assessment and improvement of power electronic systems from three levels: 1) metrics and methodologies of reliability assessment of existing system; 2) reliability improvement of existing system by means of algorithmic solutions without change of the hardware; and 3) reliability-oriented design solutions that are based on fault-tolerant operation of the overall systems. The intent of this review is to provide a clear picture of the landscape of reliability research in power electronics. The limitations of the current research have been identified and the direction for future research is suggested.

https://www.egr.msu.edu/~bingsen/files_publications/J-13_TPEL_Reliability.pdf

Survey on Reliability of Power Electronic Systems

Reliability is the ability of a product or system to perform as intended (i.e., without failure and within specified performance limits) for a specified time, in its life-cycle environment. Commonly used electronics reliability prediction methods (e.g., Mil-HDBK-217, 217-PLUS, PRISM, Telcordia, FIDES) based on handbook methods have been shown to be misleading and provide erroneous life predictions. The use of stress and damage models permits a far superior accounting of the reliability and the physics of failure (PoF); however, sufficient knowledge of the actual operating and environmental application conditions of the product is still required.



This article presents a PoF-based prognostics and health management approach for effective reliability prediction. PoF is an approach that utilizes knowledge of a product's life-cycle loading and failure mechanisms to perform reliability modeling, design, and assessment. This method permits the assessment of the reliability of a system under its actual application conditions. It integrates sensor data with models that enable in situ assessment of the deviation or degradation of a product from an expected normal operating condition and the prediction of the future state of reliability. This article presents a formal implementation procedure, which includes failure modes, mechanisms, and effects analysis, data reduction and feature extraction from the life-cycle loads, damage accumulation, and assessment of uncertainty. Applications of PoF-based prognostics and health management are also discussed.


Keywords:

reliability;
prognostics;
physics of failure;
design-for-reliability;
reliability prediction

Prognostics and Health Management of Electronics

Disclosed are systems and methods for prognostic health management (PHM) of electronic systems. Such systems and methods present challenges traditionally viewed as either insurmountable or otherwise not worth the cost of pursuit. The systems and methods are directed to the health monitoring and failure prediction of electronic systems, including the diagnostic methods employed to assess current health state and prognostic methods for the prediction of electronic system failures and remaining useful life. The disclosed methodologies include three techniques: (1) use of existing electronic systems data (circuit as a sensor); (2) use of available external measurements as condition indicators and degradation assessor; and (3) performance assessment metrics derived from available external measurements.

Systems and methods for predicting failure of electronic systems and assessing level of degradation and remaining useful life

Prognostics and health management (PHM) is an approach to system life-cycle support that seeks to reduce/eliminate inspections and time-based maintenance through accurate monitoring, incipient fault detection, and prediction of impending faults. Coupled with autonomic logistics for unprecedented responsiveness, cost effectiveness, and mission availability, PHM is largely automated in its application. Incorporating the principles of condition-based maintenance (CBM) along with the tenets of reliability-centered maintenance (RCM), the PHM paradigm extends these capabilities and provides a robust environment to optimize maintenance and logistics for increased operational availability (A0), and reduced life-cycle costs (LCC) while potentially increasing the reliability and life expectancy of mechanical, structural, and electronic systems. Driven by a demand for greater reliability at reduced cost and fueled by technological advancements, the PHM contribution to an already robust and confounding vocabulary surrounding maintenance and logistics is significant. As adopters of PHM technology attempt to define requirements and performance parameters, difficulties encountered with various non- standardized terminology indicate that the PHM vocabulary merits a lexical review. This paper will provide a compendium of PHM terminology along with definitions and examples, derived from the authors' experience in the implementation of PHM systems. Coalescing existing vocabularies and introducing, formally, the new lexicon of maintenance and logistics, the authors seek to aid in clarification of the emerging dialogue of life-cycle support.

Defining PHM, A Lexical Evolution of Maintenance and Logistics

In this paper, effects preceding a latch-up fault in insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) are studied. Primary failure modes associated with IGBT latch-up faults are reviewed. Precursors to latch-up, primarily an increase in turn-off time as a consequence of elevated junction temperature, are examined for an IGBT. The relationship between junction temperature and turn-off time is explained by modeling the parasitic properties of an IGBT. A metric is derived from the model to standardize the relative estimates in junction temperature from measurements of turn-off time. To evaluate the effects preceding latch-up in-situ, seeded fault testing is conducted on a three-phase power inverter using aged transistors induced with a fault located in the die-attach solder layer. Experimental results demonstrated the feasibility of using the proposed metric as a precursor to transistor latch-up.

Turn-Off Time as an Early Indicator of Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor Latch-up

Embeddable features that are easily incorporated in traditional power drive systems are identified for prognostics and health management (PHM) systems. The proposed novel feature takes advantage of the original pulsewidth modulation (PWM) waveform produced by the inverter that is already available in the system as a succession of step functions to study the system's response at high frequencies. The high-order oscillatory responses (ringing) present in the voltages and currents of the system are a reflection of the interaction among the internal parametric components of the power devices, allowing device characterization. Evaluating the change over time of these parameters characterized from ringing becomes a key novel feature to assess the aging status of the power electronic circuit and electric machine with respect to transistor degradation. We propose the use of a low-cost bandpass analog filter centered at a high frequency, which is relevant as a feature input capable of aging tracking. The simplified model supporting ringing as a feature to evaluate component aging and its experimental evaluation are presented with experimental data, corroborating its viability as a practical real-time power device health-state indicator.

Online Ringing Characterization as a Diagnostic Technique for IGBTs in Power Drives

Development of robust prognostics for digital electronic system health management will improve device reliability and maintainability for many industries with products ranging from enterprise network servers to military aircraft. Techniques from a variety of disciplines is required to develop an effective, robust, and technically sound health management system for digital electronics. The presented technical approach integrates collaborative diagnostic and prognostic techniques from engineering disciplines including statistical reliability, damage accumulation modeling, physics of failure modeling, signal processing and feature extraction, and automated reasoning algorithms. These advanced prognostic/diagnostic algorithms utilize intelligent data fusion architectures to optimally combine sensor data with probabilistic component models to achieve the best decisions on the overall health of digital components and systems. A comprehensive component prognostic capability can be achieved by utilizing a combination of health monitoring data and model-based estimates used when no diagnostic indicators are present. Both board and component level minimally-invasive and purely internal data acquisition methods will be paired with model-based assessments to demonstrate this approach to digital component health state awareness.

P.W. Kalgren

Papers

Systems and methods for predicting failure of electronic systems and assessing level of degradation and remaining useful life

Defining PHM, A Lexical Evolution of Maintenance and Logistics

Turn-Off Time as an Early Indicator of Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor Latch-up

Online Ringing Characterization as a Diagnostic Technique for IGBTs in Power Drives

Application of Prognostic Health Management in Digital Electronic Systems