Supraharmonic disturbances: Lifetime reduction of electronic mass-market equipment by the aging of electrolytic capacitors

Abstract

In this paper, the impact of supraharmonic disturbances on electronic mass-market equipment concerning the equipment's lifetime by the aging of the built-in electrolytic capacitors for voltage smoothing is described. In order to get an overview of the impact of the supraharmonic distortion, the increasing input currents of two typical household devices by applying an additional supraharmonic grid voltage distortion of up to 7 V are shown. Due to this additional stress, the aging of the built-in electrolytic capacitors is accelerated and will be analyzed. Therefore, different parameters of a typically used electrolytic capacitor like the core temperature, the frequency- and temperature-dependent equivalent series resistance and the overall thermal resistance are measured and calculated. Based on these values, a lifetime multiplier is computed for different ambient temperatures, ripple frequencies and ripple current amplitudes to assess the impact of these parameters on the capacitor's and thus the devices' lifetime.