Research on the power loss and junction temperature of power semiconductor devices for inverter

A new calculation method to estimate the power loss and the working temperature of IGBT and diode devices in an inverter is presented. This method is based on the measurement data of the IGBT's transient and steady state characteristics under different conditions and the thermal equivalent network model of the actual system. Finally, an experiment of a drive system including an inverter and a permanent magnet synchronous motor was done. The result shows that the calculation program is very effective for the thermal design of inverters.