Modified Approach for the Rainflow Counting Analysis of Temperature Load Signals in Power Electronics Modules

In this paper, a modified approach for the rainflow counting analysis (RCA) of temperature load signals in the lifetime and reliability estimation procedure of power electronics modules is proposed. Different temperature profiles, power cycling lifetime models and residue processing variants were investigated. It has been found that the results depend in all cases significantly on the selected residue processing method. It is shown further that this uncertainty can be almost excluded, when performing a convergence study over the load signal length to balance out the total residue weighting.