New Ultra Fast Short Circuit Detection Method Without Using the Desaturation Process of the Power Semiconductor

This paper presents an ultra fast short circuit detection method for hard switching faults and fault under load short circuit conditions without using the desaturation process of the power semiconductor. The detection method is based on monitoring the simultaneous behaviour of the di/dt and the gate voltage of the power semiconductor, which is significantly different under short circuit conditions. Furthermore, a comparison with different state-of-the-art short circuit detection methods is shown which allows a classification of the presented method in terms of detection time and detection current. Therefore, it will be presented that the new di/dt-gate short circuit detection method is able to detect a fault behaviour of the IGBT close to earliest possible point in time a short circuit failure could be detected at all.