An alternate hybrid PWM for uniform thermal sharing in single phase voltage-source inverter

The most prevalent reason for IGBT failure in voltage-source inverter (VSI) is thermal stress, which is influenced by the topology and modulation technique adopted. Hence, it is crucial to understand the impact of common sinusoidal pulse width modulation (PWM) strategies on the thermal behavior of VSI and develop improved PWM techniques. This paper presents an alternate hybrid PWM (AHPWM) switching sequence for a single-phase VSI to decrease its thermal stress and prolong its lifetime. To evaluate the number of cycles to failure of VSI, power loss and thermal analysis were conducted for VSI with AHPWM and compared with conventional PWMs. The thermal cycles experienced by IGBTs with different modulation techniques were experimentally validated using a laboratory prototype of VSI. These findings suggest that by employing AHPWM, the likelihood of VSI failure is reduced by at least one-and-a-half times, resulting in lower VSI maintenance costs.