Electrothermal Design of a Discrete GaN-Based Converter for Integrated Modular Motor Drives

Integrated modular motor drives (IMMDs) have a compact and high fault-tolerant structure compared to their conventional counterparts. The most challenging issue in the implementation of these is thermal management inverter modules due small space available for each module its physical proximity machine windings with heat production. electrothermal design discrete half-bridge radially stator-mounted (RSM) axial flux integrated drive introduced this article. are mounted on stator, along circumference. converter implemented using GaN technology, size optimized. presented integration topology from case switches cooling ambient optimized point view. modeled steady-state transient lumped parameter networks estimate steady state instantaneous temperature switches. parasitics extracted FEM simulations, influence switch loss evaluated. modeling validated computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations experimental measurements.