Reliability Assessment of Power Semiconductor Devices for a 13-Level Boost Inverter Topology

Over the past few decades, research on multilevel inverters (MLIs) has been growing in the power electronics field. The MLI is preferred over the conventional two-level converters due to its improved performance. In recent years, different types of MLI architectures have been proposed, each employing a unique combination of power semiconductor devices to produce a multilevel output voltage waveform. The reliability of an MLI is a crucial performance indicator that must be taken into account at every stage from design to commercialization. MLI is vulnerable to a variety of failure modes and processes due to a large number of interdependent components. In this letter, a 13-level boost inverter topology has been analyzed and the test results are presented and discussed. The analysis has been carried out in terms of open-circuit fault, short-circuit fault, power loss, and thermal analysis. The results have been discussed and recommendations have been made for the better design of the inverter topology to improve reliability.