Prognostics of Power Electronics, methods and validation testbeds

An overview of the current results of prognostics for DC- DC power converters is presented, focusing on the output filter capacitor component. The electrolytic capacitor used typically as fileter capacitor is one of the components of the power supply with higher failure rate, hence the effort in devel- oping component level prognostics methods for capacitors. An overview of prognostics algorithms based on electrical overstress and thermal overstress accelerated aging data is presented and a discussion on the current efforts in terms of validation of the algorithms is included. The focus of current and future work is to develop a methodology that allows for algoritm development using accelerated aging data and then transform that to a valid algorithm on the real usage time scale.