| Summary: | Virtual prototyping is a relatively new concept in the field of power electronics that intends to allow the integrated electrical, mechanical and thermal design of power electronic systems. Virtual prototyping uses coupled, multidisciplinary simulations to evaluate potential designs and aims to allow a designer to easily arrive at the optimum system design for any given set of performance targets and design space constraints using an iterative design approach. This work explores the current, established simulation options and identities advantages and weaknesses of these approaches and subsequently a set of requirements that must be met for an improved simulation approach suitable for virtual prototyping of power electronic systems. This required approach is determined to be based around coupled simulation of a number of compact, reduced order models and a fundamental weakness in all similar existing approaches is identified: the lack of a suitable method for the systematic extraction of the compact dynamic thermal models. This is then addressed by the proposal of novel method for the automatic extraction of compact thermal models of multi chip power modules from design data that would be readily available in a virtual prototyping design process. This thermal model extraction method is validated through simulation and experimental results and is implemented as a software tool for later use. A software design framework is then developed. centred on the thermal extraction utility, which implements the previously highlighted virtual prototyping approach in the form or a systematic design methodology suitable for the coupled, multidisciplinary simulation and evaluation 01" multi-chip power module based systems. The operation of the methodology is validated using design examples which demonstrate the ability of the thermal extraction utility, and the framework in which it is implemented, for use in virtual prototyping and highlight their potential weaknesses and limitations.
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