Objectives
HiEFFICIENT OBjECTiVES

 

Vision of HiEFFICIENT

At the end of 2019, the European Commission presented “The European Green Deal”, with the aim of transforming the European Union into a modern, resource-efficient, and competitive economy. The most important objectives thereby are the reduction to zero net greenhouse gases emissions by 2050 and to ensure economic growth decoupled from resource use. HiEFFICIENT directly addresses these objectives targeted in the “The European Green Deal”, having a focus on sustainable mobility and resource efficiency, and is guided by the following vision:

Based on the findings in the HiPERFORM project, the partners have set ambitious targets to be reached in this project.

HiEFFICIENT aims for a resource-efficient and decarbonized transportation system, supported by the use of highly reliable and integrated wide-bandgap (WBG) technologies in electronic power circuits and systems of electrified vehicles, testing systems, and charging infrastructures. 

HiEFFICIENT WORK PACKAGES

WORK PACKAGES

Activities within the project are divided into six technical work packages and one managment work package (WP). The requirements are derived in WP1 on the basis of the use cases (UC) and are directly fed into the technical work packages, which have a sequential flow of activities. However, it is also clear that activities in technical WPs will also happen in parallel based on existing results taken out of other research projects, in order to avoid any delays due to too strict dependencies from each other. The demonstration and evaluation of the concepts and approaches will take place in WP1 again to close the loop, which might have more than one iteration.


WP1 Use case specification, and KPI evaluation

In WP1 clear specifications for use cases with the involvement of all relevant stakeholders will be developed. In a second stage clear requirements for the use cases will be set-up to get a common understanding about the needs to establish the use case demonstrators and how the work will contribute to the fulfilment of the project objectives. Therefore, work is focused on the evaluation of the project objectives and a continuous monitoring of the competition to enable a comparison with respect to the moving state of the art will be established. The performance and the fulfilment of the project targets and requirements will be evaluated via specific criteria and performance indicators. Finally, in WP1 use case demonstrators will be evaluated, showing the fulfilment of the requirements and project objectives.

Interaction & Relation with other WPs: all WPs

Leader: AVL

WP2 GaN SoC and SiP integration and embedded technologies

WP2 pursues the overall target of providing novel integrated GaN components for reliable benchmark efficiency and power density. This work package will address innovative ways of integrating switches with drivers in diverse concepts such as SiP and SoC to significantly reduce parasitic loop inductances. In the 100 V integrated GaN segment, Europe is clearly lagging behind the developments of US companies and therefore needs to catch up, which should be possible with the envisioned GaN-SiP integration. Furthermore, the planned GaN-SoC integration will set a new benchmark with regards to switching losses. In addition to the 100 V activities, a 650 V GaN-SoC integrated half-bridge will be developed which would be the world-wide first GaN-switch in a half-bridge configuration in one semiconductor. Being complemented by innovative GaN embedding technologies including many aspects (e.g., material selection, thermal considerations) and a dedicated tasks dealing with reliability and PHM, WP2 is well positioned to contribute to three use cases as well as the highly ambitious overall project goals. 

Interaction & Relation with other WPs: WP1 and WP5, vertically with WP3 and WP4

Leader: IFAT

WP3 Design optimization for reliable power electronic systems and virtual prototyping

WP3 fully addresses the development of accurate multi-physics models as digital twins of power electronics systems that will be used in the use cases and then these developed models will be virtually integrated together creating a virtual prototyping platform, which will enable a rapid technical assessment of the dynamic performances of the power electronics (sub-) systems in each use case. In this WP3, a Multi-Objective Optimization tool will be developed to design the power modules with/without the control systems for all use cases in terms of high efficiency, high power density, less failure mechanism and lower cost. Integrated smart sensors will be fully addressed in this WP3 considering the reliability and safety aspects.

Interaction & Relation with other WPs: WP1 and 5, vertically WP2 and WP4

Leader: VUB

WP4 Optimized and modular cooling concepts and thermal management

WP4 is dealing with the thermal challenges imposed by the integration and modular system requirements of the power electronic systems for electrical vehicles introduced by the various use cases. For the defined use cases the current thermal management baselines have been explored. Modularity and integration of the various components requires innovative thermal management and possibly new and more powerful cooling methods. This work package will explore the possibilities to implement the innovative thermal management systems and to develop for specific use cases more powerful integrated cooling methods. Combined with the outcome of WP2 and WP3, WP4 results in demonstrators to be integrated in WP5 and tested in WP6.

Interaction & Relation with other WPs: WP1 and WP5, vertically WP2 and WP3

Leader: TNO

WP5 Highly integrated and modular power electronic systems with intelligent control units

WP5 gives diverse improvements and development on GaN- and SiC-based applications and concepts:

-       - development of embedding technologies for GaN and SiC bare dies into PCB;

-       - development of universal inverter application based on SiC;

-       - improvements on gate drivers for highly integrated switching cells in package;

-     development of smart interaction between physical sensors and power electronics with impact on all UCs with respect to the relevant control units.

First testing of all developed converters/inverters will be completed and based on the results of PHM-tasks located in WP 3 & 4, the algorithms are selected regarding their robustness and integrated into a compact digital-twin. Both, physics-of-failure and data driven approaches, are considered. An overall system-health score is deduced. If necessary, model-order-reduction is applied to make the algorithms fitting into the calculation power of the target HW of the use cases. The generated code is validated against test sets of data in a respective environment and the detailed models derived in WP3 (FEM) & 4 (TIS). Accelerated testing (e.g., thermal cycling) is applied (active/passive thermal cycling).

Interaction & Relation with other WPs: all other WPs

Leader: IFAG

WP6 Use Case implementation, testing, and validation

WP6 is implementing the complete target systems with the components and know-how that has been developed in the previous work packages. This includes integration activities, start-up tests, system testing and validation as well as reliability tests. Each use case is part of this work package to implement its system and to do the testing that was defined during the requirements phase in WP1. 

Interaction & Relation with other WPs: all other WPs

Leader: AVL-SFR

WP7 Project Management, Dissemination, and Exploitation

This work package summarizes all coordination and management activities. The aim is to provide efficient project structures to manage resources and results according to the project plan and ensure exploitation by continuously mitigating the risks, which might come up. Other relevant activities will be dissemination and exploitation.

Dissemination is a natural process promoting the project and makes research results known to various stakeholder groups (like research peers, industry and other commercial actors, professional organizations, policymakers) in a targeted way, to enable them to use the results in their own work. Exploitation explains the use of the results during and after the project end. Therefore, plans for dissemination and exploitation will be created in the course of the project. There will be in both cases an initial (M12) and a final dissemination / exploitation plan (M33) prepared by the consortium. These deliverables will summarize the beneficiaries’ strategy and concrete actions related to the protection, dissemination, and exploitation of the project results.

Interaction & Relation with other WPs: all other WPs

Leader: AVL, STUBA, IFAG