Analysis of loss and junction temperature in power semiconductors of the matrix converter using simple simulation methods

In this paper, simple simulation methods to calculate power semiconductor loss and instantaneous junction - case temperature difference in a power module of a matrix converter are proposed. The validity of the proposed simulation method for loss calculation is confirmed through experiment using a 22 kW test set-up of the matrix converter. By using the simulation method for temperature calculating, the influence of the output frequency on the junction - case temperature difference is investigated. Moreover, the effect of using a novel IGBT (RB-IGBT) that has reverse blocking capability is discussed. It is shown that the efficiency of a matrix converter using the RB-IGBT is higher by 1.3 points than that of a conventional PWM rectifier and inverter system.