Launch of 'MicReD Power Tester 600A' for Electric and Hybrid Vehicles
Thermal reliability and lifecycle performance testing of IGBTs, MOSFETs, transistors, chargers, etc.

As electric and hybrid vehicles become more common, designers' concerns are deepening. This is precisely because the issue of 'thermal reliability' in power electronic modules is becoming increasingly prominent.

EV/HEV designers must detect the potential for IGBT degradation caused by standard automotive drive cycles and identify the root cause of the damage.

This is why Mentor Graphics ( www.mentorkr.com ), the only EDA (Electronic Design Automation) company engaged in the Mechanical Analysis business, has launched the 'MicReD Power Tester 600A,' a thermal simulation verification solution for power electronic equipment in electric and hybrid vehicles.


▲ Andras Bas-Varnai, Senior Product Manager at MicRed

In addition to the non-destructive temperature testing hardware announced this time, Mentor Graphics operates electronic cooling software and 1D & 3D general-purpose CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) software product families as a machine analysis business.

The newly announced 'MicReD Power Tester 600A' is a device that tests the reliability of power electronic equipment in electric and hybrid vehicles (EV/HEV) during power cycling. Engineers responsible for EV/HEV development and reliability verification can use this equipment to test the thermal reliability and lifecycle performance essential for the operation of power electronic equipment such as IGBTs, MOSFETs, transistors, and chargers.


▲ Dr. Keith Hanna, Marketing Director

Dr. Keith Hanna, Marketing Director (Machine Analysis Division) at Mentor Graphics, who visited Korea, stated, “This equipment is a problem-solving solution for automotive OEMs,” adding, “Mentor Graphics is the only company that provides simulation and testing for thermal testing.” Mentor became able to implement 1D system simulation software after acquiring FlowMaster in 2012.

The company expects that the MicReD Power Tester 600A, with its accuracy and scalability, will be able to meet the industry's demands for thermal simulation and testing of power electronic equipment.

In response, Andras Vass-Varnai, Senior Product Manager at MicRed, summarized the characteristics of the new equipment as comprehensive diagnosis, accuracy, and scalability. In other words, it was emphasized that the MicReD Power Tester, which provides a simple reliability test process for lifecycle estimation, is easy to set up and fully automated for power cycles, allowing it to be operated with minimal training.


The T3Ster 'structural function' function within the power tester generates non-destructive 'real-time failure' data for each IGBT, ensuring that all diagnostic information is recorded during testing. Furthermore, this power tester can operate IGBT modules for tens of thousands of cycles, providing 'real-time' ongoing failure data for diagnosis; this significantly reduces test time and eliminates the need for post-test analysis or destructive failure analysis. It also enables accurate thermal characteristic analysis of IGBTs and components by reducing related 3D CFD (computational fluid dynamics) simulation errors from typically up to 20% to 0.5%.

In particular, users can combine up to eight of these units for system testing to simultaneously power cycle up to 128 IGBTs. It also provides 48V under load, and users can maximize flexibility by handling externally mounted components in the cooling system.

Another advantage of the MicReD Power Tester 600A is that it can be combined with Mentor's CFD simulation technologies. Mentor’s FloTHERM® and FloEFD™ 3D CFD software provides thermal simulation of power modules from the early stages and, when combined with Flowmaster®, a system-of-system (SoS) 1D CFD modeling tool for all-vehicle thermal fluids, provides a very high level of accuracy.

Mentor recently announced the latest version of FloTHERM 11.1, a thermal simulation tool for MicReD T3Ster calibration. Regarding this, Senior Manager Andras stated, “The reason for releasing the latest version of FloTHERM 11.1 is that while it can be applied to all other applications, a major reason for the upgrade was specifically for this power tester.”