Accelerated Ageing of Metallized Film Capacitors Under High Ripple Currents Combined With a DC Voltage

• Published in: IEEE transactions on power electronics 2015-05, Vol.30 (5), p.2435-2444
• Main Authors: Makdessi, Maawad, Sari, Ali, Venet, Pascal, Bevilacqua, Pascal, Joubert, Charles
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aging; Capacitors; Dielectrics; Electric currents; Electric potential; Electric power; Electrical equipment; Engineering Sciences; Frequencies; Inverters; Law; Metallizing; Predictive maintenance; Pulse duration modulation; Ripples; Stress; Temperature; Validity; Voltage; Windings
• ISSN: 0885-8993; 1941-0107
• DOI: 10.1109/TPEL.2014.2351274

In view of their potential for high dielectric breakdown strengths, low dissipation factors, and good dielectric stability over a wide range of frequencies and temperature, metallized films capacitors are very used components for aeronautic applications. Nevertheless, capacitors remain unreliable components; a good acquaintance of their deterioration over time would enable us to perform a predictive maintenance on the component and thus improve the availability of the whole system. This operation requires the knowledge of the capacitor ageing law and their failure mechanisms associated with the application. In a standard six pulses rectifier-fed pulse width modulation inverter, dc-link capacitors are generally subjected to gradients of temperature due to the encountered electrical stresses. Since traditional floating ageing tests, which consist on applying constant voltages and temperature across the component, do not reflect the normal ageing of the component, we propose in this paper to study the degradation kinetics of metallized films capacitors under high ripple currents, alone or combined with a dc voltage across the devices terminals. It will therefore reproduce with a more representative way the ageing of the component in comparison with the traditional floating ageing tests. Based on the resonant circuit properties, the ageing test bench especially developed for our study provides high currents and voltages from a low power source. Through the study and analysis of the capacitors parameters evolution under high ripple currents, an original ageing law is proposed to model the capacitance decrease with time based on the electrochemical corrosion of the capacitors electrodes. The adequacy between the experimental points and the model proved the validity of the proposed law.