Investigation of discontinuous PWM as additional optimization parameter in an active thermal control

Abstract

For AC converters in electric vehicles, the opportunity to change space vector modulation to discontinuous PWM during operation is investigated and added to an active thermal control, which already varies the switching frequency and the current limit to achieve lower junction temperature swings and improve the reliability. Simulated start-up processes of the vehicle show the potential of this approach. The online power loss model and the thermal temporal behaviour is validated by measurements.