A prognostic method for predicting failure of dc/dc converter

Abstract The failure of dc/dc converters can directly result in electronic systems working unconventionally or significant downtime. To pre-determine time to failure and generate substantial safety and cost benefits, it is necessary to assess the extent of deviation of dc/dc converters from its expected state of health in real time and predict time to failure in advance. This paper presents a novel prognostic method for predicting the time to failure of dc/dc converters. The process involves identifying precursor parameters, determining prognostic of failure, and determining a criterion for predicting time to failure. The output voltage is used as a precursor parameter and directly monitored when the converter with a given load periodically operates at different temperature stresses. The phenomenon that the differences of output voltages collected at different temperature stresses begin to increase with a large (or small) fluctuation is detected in collected output voltages. This phenomenon is identified as a prognostic of failure. A percentage of the initial difference is used as the criterion for predicting time to failure. A case study is given to illustrate the procedure that how to monitor output voltages, detect prognostic and predict time to failure. The results show the health state could be assessed in real time and the time to failure could be predicted in advance. Furthermore, the deviation of the predicted time to failure from the actual time to failure could meet the demand of a considered acceptable range in engineering practice.