Three times a charm

Three candidates have been awarded an eighth CTI Young Drive Experts Award at the 15th International CTI Symposium for Automotive Transmissions, HEV and EV Drives.

First place overall went to Dr Marco Denk (Research Associate at Bayreuth University), second place to Harald Kraus (Head of the scientific team E-Mobility and Alternative Drives) and third place to Dr Markus Bachinger (Executive Engineer at AVL List GmbH, Graz).

Dr Marco Denk won first place with his doctorate entitled ’In Situ Monitoring of IGBT Performance Semiconductor Modules using Real-Time Rectifier Temperature Readings’. This involved developing a smart drive switch element for the power electronics that not only activates and deactivates the semiconductors, but for the first time can identify its operating load and age-related performance too – and store both on an EEPROM.

To enable this, he developed a procedure that can be implemented on an industrial scale to measure the semiconductor’s rectifier temperature. The measuring procedure was successfully implemented in a hybrid automotive transmission’s inverter, and is the first functional, series-production enabled solution for identifying the load status of a non-modified power module.

Harald Kraus won second place for developing an operation strategy for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles based on previous vehicle and driver data, while Dr Markus Bachinger won third place with his approach for the generic modelling of transmission topologies with multiple coupled friction elements.

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