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US 12,615,000 B2Granted
Power supply device for a hybrid or electric vehicle
AssigneeFord Global Technologies, LLC
InventorsMan Prakash Gupta, Kewei Xiao, Alfredo R. Munoz, Michael W. Degner
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An inverter includes power cards and link capacitors. The power cards have inverting circuitry configured to convert DC power provided by a power source into AC power. The link capacitors are configured to absorb ripple currents generated by the inverting circuitry or the power source. The link capacitors and power cards are aligned along an axis. The power cards are spatially interleaved with link capacitors.
Claims20
An inverter comprising:
- a plurality of switching units, each switching unit having (i) a primary housing and (ii) a circuit disposed within the primary housing, wherein the switching units are configured to convert DC power provided by a power source into AC power;
- and
- a plurality of link capacitors, each link capacitor having (i) a secondary housing and (ii) a capacitive element disposed within the secondary housing, wherein (a) the link capacitors are configured to absorb ripple currents generated by the switching units or the power source, (b) the primary housings are interleaved with the secondary housings, and (c) the primary and secondary housings collectively define cooling channels, wherein the cooling channels include an inflowing cooling channel and an outflowing cooling channel, and wherein the inflowing cooling channel and the outflowing cooling channel extend through each of the primary and secondary housings.
An inverter comprising:
- power cards having inverting circuitry configured to convert DC power provided by a power source into AC power;
- and
- link capacitors configured to absorb ripple currents generated by the inverting circuitry or the power source, wherein (i) the link capacitors and power cards are aligned along an axis and (ii) the power cards are spatially interleaved with link capacitors, wherein (a) each of the power cards and each of the link capacitors includes an external housing, (b) each of the external housings is aligned along the axis and defines cooling channels, and (c) the cooling channels include an inflowing cooling channel and an outflowing cooling channel that extend through each external housing and are aligned along directions that are substantially parallel with the axis.
An inverter comprising:
- a plurality of switching units, each switching unit having a primary housing and a circuit disposed within the primary housing, wherein the switching units are configured to convert DC power into AC power;
- and
- a plurality of link capacitors, each link capacitor having a secondary housing and a capacitive element disposed within the secondary housing, wherein the link capacitors are configured to absorb ripple currents, the primary housings are aligned with the secondary housings, and the primary and the secondary housings collectively define cooling channels that extend through each primary housing and each secondary housing.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.