Reliability Analyse of Three Family and a New Structural Redundancy in Power Switches

Parallel, standby and series configurations are different types of power switch configuration that can be considered in semiconductor switches to improve the reliability of power electronic converters and theirs lifetime, especially in specific application such as high power industrial applications, satellites, power electronic interface for renewable energies and etc. In this paper, the reliability models of series traditional configuration and the new type are developed based on the Markov process. The mean time to failure (MTTF) of series and new configuration are derived. The reliability and MTTF of triple and new configuration are compared together. In some cases, some redundancy configurations have the same MTTF in a boundary condition. The analytical result illustrated that the new configuration is a suitable alternative instead of the standby configuration. The result showed the series and parallel configuration are suitable for high voltage and high current applications .