Élaboration et comparaison de deux modèles de durée de vie des fils d’interconnexion des modules de puissance, l’un basé sur les déformations et l’autre sur les dégradations

The domain of power electronics reliability has become an important center of interest with the recent massive system electrification. The manufacturers are more and more confronted to the necessity of producing reliable devices with optimized maintenance. Electronics components, such as IGBTs, diodes and MOSFETs assembled in power modules, are at the center of the systems conversion, and as a consequence, are subjected to high environmental and functional stresses (ambient temperature, vibrations…). All these factors have a strong impact on the components lifetime and thus on the devices reliability. Economically, scheduling a maintenance with a system replacement is less detrimental than a brutal failure of the system. As a consequence, the use of lifetime prognostic tools is necessary. The problematic consists in the health state prediction of power modules in functioning to be able to schedule a maintenance before the failure of the equipment.To be able to determine the remaining useful lifetime of power modules in functioning, lifetime models are used. These models can either be empirical, physical or statistical. The empirical models are the most common ones, because of their easy establishment and implementation. They are based on results from accelerated power cycling tests, which reproduce the stresses endured by the power modules in severe conditions. An extrapolation is then needed to obtain the power module health state in normal functioning conditions. The main drawback of these models is the lack of description of the physical mechanisms leading to damage, resulting potentially in errors in particular during extrapolation. That’s the reason why physical models start to draw more attention.In the thesis, two physical lifetime models of IGBT power modules are proposed. The first approach is based on deformation induced inside the device assembly in operation. The degradation is in this case described by the quantification of deformation related to thermal stresses. In the second approach, the lifetime model is based directly on damage through the establishment of a degradation model. These two lifetime models are finally compared to show the benefits and disadvantages of each. More generally, the establishment and comparison of these models is part of an approach to develop diagnostic tools so that the remaining useful lifetime of power modules can be predicted in operation.