The inverter of the electrical driven compressor (EDC) is subjected to high thermal loads which are resulting from external temperature exposure and from compressor solicitations from the vehicle thermal loop (refrigerant nature, flow rate, compression rate, initial temperature). An incorrect thermal management of the inverter might lead to a significant decrease of efficiency which degrades the performance, product lifetime (electronics components failure) and even worse, might lead to a hazardous thermal event (HTE).
The need of the automotive market to drastically decrease project development time, requires decreasing design and simulation activities lead time without degrading the design robustness, which is one additional complexity and challenge for the R&D team. Analytical calculations are performed to understand the significant impact of the main physical parameters (refrigerant temperature, material properties, electronics component power dissipation, …) on the initial design definition. This would help to save time to optimize the design before delivering to the numerical methods.
In this paper, the development process of the inverter product, based on systems engineering methodology, is briefly described. The systems engineering approach allows to define the good inverter architecture and design solutions. It ensures the testing of all requirements at different levels (electronics components, inverter, compressor, …). Multi-fidelity simulation approach on multiple levels (individual components level till full system level) is also described. Working on multilevel simulations accelerates the design activities and provides proper design justification to ensure design robustness. Correlation between simulation and test results is also shown in this paper.