Design and Evaluation of A 150 kVA SiC MOSFET Based Three Level TNPC Phase-leg PEBB for Aircraft Motor Driving Application

Abstract

This paper presents the design and evaluation of a phase-leg of power electronic building block (PEBB) with 150-kVA rated power by using 3-level T-type neutral-point-clamped (3L-TNPC) inverter for high-speed motor drives. Model-based pre-design evaluations and power module selections are first introduced to evaluate the design feasibility and improve efficiency. Based on the selected power modules, a novel busbar structure is proposed with a stray inductance of 11.2 nH. Besides these, a novel non-metallic cold plate is designed and evaluated. It shows less weight and improved common-mode noise than the traditional aluminum-cast cold plate. In the end of the paper, continuous tests are carried out to demonstrate the performance of the designed PEBB system. The measured peak efficiency is 99.45% with 30 kHz switching frequency and the measured specific power is 35.36 kW/kg.