Summary
Due to the growing power and limited space in the wind power application, the thermal loading of the wind power converter is becoming significant especially at multi-MW level. It has been proven that the thermal stress of power devices has significant impacts to the reliability and cost of the converter and their relationship can be analytically correlated. Therefore, thermal stress analysis is crucial important for the next generation wind power converter system.
The loading of wind power converter is influenced by many factors which may involve multidisciplinary approaches of analysis under various time constants. Thereby, a framework with multi-domain models of the wind turbine system is established for the stress analysis. In this framework, the factors of mission profile, converter design, and converter controls are taken into account and they can be translated into the corresponding stress profile in the power semiconductor devices.