Weight Estimation of Electronic Power Conversion Systems

Electronic power conversion systems with large number of power converters have a variety of applications, such as data center, electric vehicles and future smart "nanogrid" in residential home. Those systems could have very different architectures. For example, one system could be based on ac, dc or hybrid power distribution bus, and the bus voltage could be different. Also those systems have great need to develop low-cost architectures which reduce weight, increase efficiency and improve reliability of the system. However, how to evaluate different architectures and select a better one is still not clear. This thesis presents a procedure to estimate weight of electronic power conversion systems, which provides an angle to evaluate different system architectures. This procedure has three steps. Step I, according to application of the system and system structure, determines the electrical and environmental specifications for each converter in the system. Step II studies the design procedures for each converter in the system and determines parameters such as the wire gauge and length of cable; the parameters of the passive components, such as inductance and capacitance; the parameters of the power switch, such as the voltage rating, current rating and loss; and parameters of the cooling system, such as the thermal resistance of the heat sink. Step III, according to the converters' parameters, carry out the physical design and selection of sub-components such as the inductor and heat sink to get the components' weight; the sum of those components' weight is the estimated system weight. This procedure has also been implemented in the form of software – system weight estimation tool. Using this software, weight of sample systems with ac dc bus and two different bus voltages have been estimated and compared.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Department dc:contributor.department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2011

Author dc:creator

• Wen, Bo

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Boroyevich, Dushan

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Ngo, Khai D. T.
• Mattavelli, Paolo

• power converter
• system architecture
• power conversion system
• Weight

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

etd-06102011-170113

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/33514