Accelerated life testing and thermo-mechanical simulation in power electronic device development

Product development in the power electronic industry is characterized by the short time-tomarket and high-reliability requirements. Improved design methods and advanced modelling techniques are therefore required to support package design selection and to arrive at lifetime prediction algorithms for failure prevention. In this work, experimental and computational activities aimed at supporting the development of a press-pack insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) is reported. A testing rig for accelerated testing of single IGBT chips under controlled contact pressure conditions is presented. Then, thermomechanical simulations of accelerated tests by the finite element method provided stress-strain evolution in the device and insight into the sources of local degradation.