High-Voltage Silicon Carbide Traction Inverter Development for Heavy-Duty Electric Trucks: Design, Simulation, and Experimental Validation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51483/IJAIML.6.3.2026.203-219Keywords:
Electric trucks, traction inverter, silicon carbide MOSFET, MATLAB/Simulink, SVPWM, dead time compensation, thermal management, ISO 26262, heavy duty EV.Abstract
A detailed design, MATLAB/Simulink simulation and experimental validation of an 800 V/350 kW Silicon Carbide (SiC) MOSFET based heavy duty Class 8 electric trucks traction inverter are presented in this paper. The proposed 3-phase 2-level voltage source inverter (2L-VSI) uses 1200 V SiC MOSFET half-bridge modules and has a conversion efficiency of 98.46% at the rated load of 250 kW. A new integrated liquid-cooled busbar with a stray inductance of just 9.8 nH in the commutation loop lowers stray inductance in the busbar loop. A high-fidelity MATLAB/Simulink three-level model hierarchy is used to obtain simulation results for both steady state and transient conditions, which are compared with hardware measurements. Experimental results from a dynamometer test bench and vehicle-level testing, on a 44 tonne truck platform, verify that the current THD is sub-2%, junction temperatures are within 98°C at peak load, and compliance with ISO 26262 ASIL-C, CISPR 25 Class 3 and UN ECE R100 standards is confirmed.
