G. Nicoletto et al., Accelerated life testing and thermomechanical simulation in power electronic device development, J STRAIN A, 34(6), 1999, pp. 455-462
Product development in the power electronic industry is characterized by th
e short time-to-market and high-reliability requirements. Improved design m
ethods and advanced modelling techniques are therefore required to support
package design selection and to arrive at lifetime prediction algorithms fo
r failure prevention. In this work, experimental and computational activiti
es aimed at supporting the development of a press-pack insulated gate bipol
ar transistor (IGBT) is reported. A testing rig for accelerated testing of
single IGBT chips under controlled contact pressure conditions is presented
. Then, thermomechanical simulations of accelerated tests by the finite ele
ment method provided stress-strain evolution in the device and insight into
the sources of local degradation.