Denso Corporation

Toyota Jidosha Kabushiki Kaisha

Yusuke Shindo

Tsuneo Maebara

Junichi Fukuta

Toru Wakimoto

Masakazu Kouda

Kunio Iritani

Ryotaro Miura

Ken Toshiyuki

Koichi Sakata

Koichi Nishibata

Shinichiro Nakata

Kenji Iriyama

Tomotaka Suzuki

Yasutaka Senda

Keisuke Hata

Akihito Higashihara

Syun Miyauchi

Ryota Kubokawa

Hiroya Tsuji

Junichi Nagata

Yuji Takeo

Yoshiyuki Hamanaka

Hiroyuki Kawata

Yoshinori Hayashi

Shunichi Kubo

Tsuyoshi Takemoto

Tetsuya Dewa

Takao Kanzaki

Tomohisa Ose

Kenichi Wakabayashi

Kenji Funahashi

Akira Sumi

Kenji Komiya

Yasuhiro Terao

Eiichiro Shigehara

Yasunari Tanimura

Yoshitaka Kato

Ryoya Kazaoka

Youhei Kondou

Yasuaki Igarashi

A power converter has a capacitor and a power conversion unit having a series-connected unit composed of an upper arm side switching element and a lower arm side switching element. The capacitor is connected in parallel with the serios connection unit. The power conversion unit supplies electric power to a motor. A controller for the power conversion unit has a frequency characteristics estimation part estimating frequency characteristics of a battery current of the battery when a current is flowing between the power convertor and the battery, a ripple current setting part determining a ripple frequency of a ripple current contained in the battery current based on the frequency characteristics of the battery current, and a control part performing a switching control of the switching elements based on the ripple frequency in order to generate the ripple current.

Controller for power converter

An insulation resistance detection device detects a voltage at a connection point between a coupling capacitor and a resistance in the case where a frequency signal is outputted to the resistance, and detects an insulation resistance between a ground portion and a power supply path based on a moving average value of a detection voltage. The insulation resistance detection device includes a first determination unit, a resistance detection unit, and a second determination unit. In response to a determination that the pulsation of the detection voltage is attenuated, the resistance detection unit detects the insulation resistance based on, instead of a first moving average value, a second moving average value calculated by using the detection voltage in a second range including a smaller number of detection voltages than in the first range.

Insulation resistance detection device

In an insulation resistance detection apparatus, a voltage determiner determines whether a detection voltage, which has changed by at least a preset value, becomes stable at around a changed voltage value. A resistance determiner determines a value of an insulation resistance between a ground portion and a power-supply path based on a currently sampled value of the detection voltage instead of a moving average in response to determination that the detection voltage, which has changed by at least the preset value, becomes stable at around the changed voltage value.

Insulation resistance determination apparatus

An electrical leakage determination system determines if an electrical leakage occurs between each of power supply paths and a grounding section. The electrical leakage determination system includes a coupling capacitor with one end connected to an anode-side power supply path, a resistor connected to the other end of the coupling capacitor, and an oscillator connected to the resistor to output an AC voltage to the resistor. A determiner detects a voltage at a connection point located between the coupling capacitor and the resistor when the oscillator outputs an AC voltage to the resistor. The determiner determines if the electrical leakage occurs based on the detected voltage. The oscillator increases an absolute value of an AC voltage output during a preparation period provided prior to a detection timing when a voltage is detected at a connection point greater than an absolute value of an AC voltage output at the detection timing.

Electrical leakage determination system

An electrical leakage determination system that determines if an electrical leakage occurs includes a capacitor having first and second ends connected to a cathode side power supply path and a grounding section and a switch disposed in an electrical path formed parallel to the capacitor. When the capacitor discharges and a predetermined period has elapsed after the controller sets an energized state between the cathode-side power supply path and the grounding section by bringing the switch to an energizing position, the controller allows the capacitor to charge by setting an energization shut down state between the cathode-side power supply path and the grounding section by bringing the switch to an energization shut down position. The controller subsequently detects a voltage value of the capacitor and determines if the electrical leakage is either present or absent based on the voltage value.

A drive circuit drives switches that are connected to each other in parallel. The drive circuit includes individual discharge paths, a common discharge path, blocking units, a discharge switch, off-holding switches, and a drive control unit. The drive control unit selects, as target switches to be driven to be turned on, at least two switches among the switches. The at least two switches include a first switch and a second switch. The first switch is last to be switched to an off-state among the at least two switches that are selected as the target switches and switched to an on-state. The second switch is other than the first switch among the at least two switches. The off-holding switches includes a first off-holding switch and a second off-holding switch. After switching the second off-holding switch to an on-state, the drive control unit switches the discharge switch to an on-state.

Drive circuit for switch

A semiconductor device turns on and off a power switching device having a gate terminal and output terminals between which an output current is produced by a gate voltage applied to the gate terminal. The semiconductor device includes: an output current detector detecting a current value correlated with the output current; a voltage detector detecting a voltage across the output terminals of the power switching device; a clamp circuit clamping the gate voltage at a predetermined value; and a controller controlling the clamp circuit to adjust the gate voltage based on the voltage detected by the voltage detector. The controller controls the clamp circuit to set the gate voltage to be at a minimum voltage according to the detected voltage to cause the output current to be larger than a threshold current required for detecting the short circuit in the power switching device.

Semiconductor device

In a control circuit for controlling a power converter that includes a switch, a power supply circuit outputs electrical power, and a command generator generates a switching command that controls switching operations of the switch, based on the electrical power output from the power supply circuit. A failure mode determiner executes a determination of whether which of failure modes has occurred in the power supply circuit, and outputs a result of the determination. A switch controller selectively executes, based on the result of the determination, a first switch control task and a second switch control task. The first switch control task forcibly shuts down the switch independently of the switching command, and the second switch control task enables the switching operations of the switch to be continuously controlled based on the switching command.

Control circuit for power converter

A switching circuit may be provided with: a parallel circuit including a first IGBT and a second IGBT connected in parallel; a controller configured to receive a signal indicating a turn-on timing and a turn-off timing. The controller is configured to: turn on both of the first and second IGBTs at the turn-on timing, execute a first control in which one of the first and second IGBTs is turned off before the turn-off timing and the other of the first and second IGBTs is turned off at the turn-off timing in a case where current flowing through the parallel circuit is equal to or lower than a threshold value, and execute a second control in which both of the first and second IGBTs are turned off at the turn-off timing in a case where the current flowing through the parallel circuit is higher than the threshold value.

Switching circuit

In an apparatus for controlling switching operations of switching elements of a power converter to convert input power to output power, a drive controller is configured to generate a drive control instruction indicative of predetermined switching operations of the switching elements, and output the drive control instruction. A driver is configured to drive, in accordance with the drive control instruction, the switching elements, so that the switching elements perform the predetermined switching operations. A switching speed adjuster is configured to obtain at least information indicative of atmospheric pressure, and adjust a switching speed of each of the switching elements such that the switching speed of the corresponding switching element decreases with a decrease of the atmospheric pressure.

Apparatus for controlling power converters

In an integrated circuit formed into a single chip, a drive signal generating unit generates drive signals for switching elements of a power conversion circuit. A monitoring unit monitors a microcomputer that calculates generation information that is information used to generate the drive signals, and determines whether or not an abnormality has occurred in the microcomputer. An angle converting unit converts an output signal of an angle sensor to rotation angle information of a rotating electric machine. A drive signal generating unit generates the drive signals for controlling driving of the rotating electric machine based on the generation information and the rotation angle information when the monitoring unit determines that an abnormality has not occurred in the microcomputer, and generates the drive signals based on the rotation angle information, without using the generation information, when the monitoring unit determines that an abnormality has occurred in the microcomputer.

Integrated circuit

Upper arm connection sections and lower arm connection sections are provided in parallel. An upper arm transformer and a power supply are provided in an area opposed to the lower arm connection sections with respect to the upper arm connection sections. A power supply control section is provided in at least one of an area opposed to the upper arm connection sections with respect to the upper arm transformer, and an area which is sandwiched between at least one of the upper and lower connection sections closest to one side of the substrate positioned in a direction in which the upper arm connection sections are arranged, and the one side. The lower arm transformer is provided in an area opposed to the upper arm connection sections with respect to the lower arm connection sections. The lower arm transformer is common to at least two of the lower arm switching elements.

Insulated power supply apparatus with upper arm transformers and a lower arm transformer

An ECU has a function of calculating a rotation angle, which is used for torque control, based on amplitude-modulated signals SIN and COS outputted from an angle sensor and a synchronous detection signal. Frequency components generated at the time of switching operation of switching elements of an inverter connected to a motor-generator is included in an output voltage of the inverter. The ECU has a function of shifting frequencies of the frequency components and an excitation frequency of an excitation signal from each other so that noise having the frequencies of the frequency components are not superimposed on the amplitude-modulated signals SIN and COS.

Rotation angle calculation device

An insulated power supply apparatus includes an upper arm transformer which has a primary side coil and a secondary side coil, a lower arm transformer which has a primary side coil and a secondary side coil, and a power supply control section which has a voltage control switching element and an integrated circuit which turns on or off the voltage control switching element. At least one of the upper arm transformer and the lower arm transformer is adjacent to the power supply control section when viewing a surface of the substrate from a front thereof. An electric path transfers output voltage of the secondary side coil of the transformer adjacent to the power supply control section, to the integrated circuit. The integrated circuit turns on or off the voltage control switching element to perform feedback control so that the output voltage detected via the electric path reaches a target voltage.

Insulated power supply apparatus applied to power converter circuit including series connections of upper and lower arm switching elements

In a test of discharging a capacitor by electrically turning on a first switching element and a second switching element that are inserted in series in a conductor connecting a positive electrode and a negative electrode of the capacitor, a discharge current that passes through the first and second switching elements tend to apply stress on the first and second switching elements. In this discharge test, while a first control signal for putting the first switching element into a low resistance state is being applied to the first switching element, a second control signal increasing a voltage thereof over time is applied to the second switching element, and application of one of or both of the first and second control signals is stopped when a current detector detects a current. Since a discharge test ends when a limited discharge current starts flowing, stress associated with the discharge test is reduced.

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Nagoya, Japan

Yusuke Shindo