Physics based Degradation Modeling and Prognostics of Electrolytic Capacitors under Electrical Overstress Conditions

This paper proposes a physics based degradation modeling and prognostics approach for electrolytic capacitors. Electrolytic capacitors are critical components in electronics systems in aeronautics and other domains. Degradation's in capacitor and MOSFET components are often the cause of failures in DC-DC converters. For example, prevalent fault effects, such as a ripple voltage surge at the power supply output, can damage interconnected critical subsystems leading to cascading fault propagation. Prognostics in general and in this case electronics components in particular is concerned with the prediction of remaining useful life (RUL) of components and systems. It performs a condition-based health assessment by estimating the current state of health. Furthermore, it leverages the knowledge of the device physics and degradation physics to predict remaining useful life as a function of current state of health and anticipated operational and environmental conditions. Physics-based models capture degradation phenomena in terms of component geometry and energy based principles that define the effect of stressors on the component behavior. This is in contrast to the traditional approach for deriving degradation models from empirical data. Implementing the degradation modeling techniques present a general methodology for estimating lifetimes due to specific failure mechanisms. The failure rate models can be tuned to include parameters that relate to the present health of the device/system and the expected conditions under which it will be operated. The models and algorithms are applied to data from degradation experiments of several COTS capacitors. Results show the efficiency of the approach chosen.