Design of a multi-phase inverter for low voltage high power electric vehicles

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a compact multiphase inverter for use in low voltage high power electric vehicles. An electrical power of up to 360 kW at a DC link voltage below 60 V is spread over multiple phases in order to keep stress on switches within feasible limits. Requirements on switches, gate drivers and DC link capacitors are investigated. The integration with a novel electric machine type claims highly compact geometric design with ultra-low resistive and inductive paths. A comparison to state-of-the-art high voltage high power inverter components in terms of efficiency and cost is drawn. Exemplarily, investigations are carried out on a 60-phase inverter.