DIAGNOSTIC/PROGNOSTIC EXPERIMENTS FOR CAPACITOR DEGRADATION AND HEALTH MONITORING IN DC-DC CONVERTERS

In DC-DC power converter systems electrolytic capacitors and MOSFET’s have higher failure rates among the components. Degradation in the capacitors under varying operating conditions leads to high ripples output voltages and currents affecting downstream components leading to cascading faults.

For example, in avionics systems where the power supply drives a GPS unit, ripple currents can cause glitches in the GPS position and velocity output, and this may cause errors in the Inertial Navigation (INAV) system, causing the aircraft to fly off course The work in this paper proposes a detail experimental and systematic study on analyzing the degradation phenomenon is electrolytic capacitors under high stress operating conditions.