Simulation-Assisted Design of a Power Stack for Improving Static Current Sharing Among Three IGBT Modules Connected in Parallel

Abstract

In this study, cosimulation with Q3D and Simplorer were adopted to design a single-phase power stack with equal output current on three paralleled IGBT modules in high power application, therefore, the derating of total current will be reduced, which can improve the current utilization and power density of power stack. The performance of the designed stack was verified using a double-pulse test (DPT). The circuit used in the DPT regarded the power stack output current as static current, which is a critical index to evaluate current sharing. The static current sharing among the IGBT modules was mainly dependent on the stray inductance of the DC busbar, IGBT modules, and phase output bar (POB), which is used to connect the IGBT modules to load, in parallel paths of the power stack. Cosimulation was performed to determine the stray inductance of the IGBT modules, DC busbar and POB, and a constant-current-slope method was used to verify the inductance. Subsequently, design the shapes of DC busbar and POB for attaining maximum ratio of imbalanced current (MRIC) of the three IGBT modules is within 3% under 200% (2400A) rated current. The cosimulation results indicated that the MRIC of the current paths in power stack were 0.8%. Finally, three IGBT modules and a gate driver were used to construct power stack with 1000V DC link. The experimental results obtained by DPT indicated that the MRIC was 0.9% under 200% rated current, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed stray inductance design method.

Keywords

• IGBT module
• power stack
• cosimulation
• current sharing
• paralleled operation