Reliability oriented thermal management of aircraft power converters

On board electrical power generation continue to increase as more aircraft systems are being electrified. Increasingly power converters are the interface of power generation and electrical loads in aircrafts. Reliability of aircraft power electronics is essential for high reliability and mission critical applications. Along with wear-out failure mechanisms, random failure modes must also be addressed to realize high reliability aerospace power converters. A dominant random failure mode in aerospace environment is due to cosmic rays (CR). In this work, a thermal management approach is proposed to maximize reliability of the converters considering CR failure mode. The proposed thermal controller is validated with an experimental setup. In the discussion, the trade-off involved between wear-out and CR induced failure mode is addressed.