Electrical and Thermal Design of a Digital Fusebox for the URE06 Electric Race Car

Johan G.S. van Uden Eindhoven University of Technology E-mail: j.g.s.v.uden@student.tue.nl

Abstract In this paper a system, called the fusebox, is discussed. Because time is crucial for a race team, the fusebox is designed to reduce the time needed to find the source of electrical failures. It distributes power to all electrical systems through power ICs which have status outputs that are connected to a microcontroller. If a system connected to an IC fails, the microcontroller sends a CAN message to the dashboard display allowing the system to show drivers and/or engineers which system is responsible for the failure. In this paper both the thermal and electrical designs of the fusebox are discussed. Keywords Automotive electronics, Power distribution, Product design, Thermal analysis.

inputs and status outputs are evaluated by a microcontroller allowing the system to signal an electrical fault. Since every system in the car has its own separate power IC, the microcontroller is able to identify the failing system. A failure detection by the microcontroller is communicated through a Controller Area Network (CAN) to other systems connected such as a data logger, telemetry unit or dashboard display. This saves valuable time when solving and identifying problems. Although fuseboxes have proven to be very valuable in saving time, there were some problems with the previous design used by URE. The air holes in the casing allowed small, damaging, parts of gravel into the casing. Furthermore the status of the ICs could only be shown when the fusebox was connected to CAN. Moreover the fusebox used was specifically designed for the 2010 URE race car and could not be used in any other car. More flexibility is needed for the new fusebox. Therefore the fusebox has been totally redesigned. In this paper the new design is presented and the various design considerations are discussed. II. FORMULATION OF THE PROBLEM A. Thermal design From tests with previous fusebox designs, it is known that power ICs dissipate a considerable amount of power when operating in current limitation mode. This results in a temperature rise in the fusebox. Since no studies have been carried out in that particular field, it is unknown how large this temperature rise would be in various situations. In order to prevent thermal problems, the previous fusebox was equipped with a small fan to ensure airflow through the casing. This solution is not ideal, because a race car collects a lot of gravel inside the cockpit from the track. Small parts of gravel could easily enter the casing through the air holes, where they
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I. INTRODUCTION In the world of motorsport time is everything. Not only on the track the pursuit of speed is never-ending, also in the pits it is important to work fast and save time. Identifying the source of problems would greatly contribute in reducing the time needed to fix them. Therefore University Racing Eindhoven (URE) decided to design a system which can automatically detect short circuits, broken wires and loose connectors and report them to the driver and/or pit crew. This system, called the fusebox, operates in a similar way as a traditional fuse and relay box, but with additional failure detection and autorecovery functionality. The traditional fuses and relays are replaced by power ICs, which are smaller and lightweight. Power ICs have a built-in current limitation, and an input pin to switch them on and off, so they behave both as a fuse as well as a relay. The autorecovery functionality of the system is also provided by the power ICs. When its output is short circuited, the power IC enters current limitation mode, instead of blowing a fuse. When the short circuit is resolved, the IC will resume normal operation. Additionally these power ICs provide a status output that indicates in what mode the IC is operating. The relay

could potentially damage the PCB. Since the fusebox is an essential system in the car, better protection is required. B. Electrical design Since URE has already used fuseboxes in their previous cars, some of the elements of the existing electrical design could be reused. For example the design of the microcontroller interface and the design of the CAN connection are reusable. However there were also parts that had to be redesigned. UREs engineers want to be able to detect every fault even when the system is not connected to CAN. Therefore the first requirement is that the new fusebox has to be equipped with error LEDs for every power IC. Another requirement is a flexible design which allows reuse in future cars. With some minor adjustments it should be possible to use the same fusebox in the next URE cars. The power ICs that were used in previous URE fusebox designs come in a package in which no other power ICs are available. Therefore a different series of power ICs has been chosen for the new design. In the package used by this series of ICs three different types of power ICs are available with different current limitation values. These ICs are interchangeable without altering the PCB design. C. PCB and casing design To prevent thermal problems sufficient heat flow capability has to be guaranteed. Therefore, the PCB and casing have to be designed together as one system. In previous fusebox designs every part was designed separately and sequentially instead of simultaneously. After the electrical circuit design was finished, the PCB was designed. Only after the PCB was produced and assembled, the design phase of the casing started. From a thermal point of view, it is better to design the electrical system, PCB and casing simultaneously. In order to distribute power to all the systems in the car, at least 15 ICs are needed. Each IC needs about 6cm2 of PCB space for cooling through the PCB [2], thus for cooling purposes the total PCB surface needs to be 90cm2. Since cooling through the PCB is not the most efficient way a heat sink is used as well. Because the heat sink will be the top of the casing and the PCB is placed inside the casing, the size of the baseplate of the heat sink is affected by the size of the PCB. D. Software Software is needed for the error detection and to issue warnings to the driver and pit crew. It contains a
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function to continuously check for incoming CAN messages. If a CAN message is received which requests the status of the fusebox, another function will check all the ICs. This function compares the status output of a power IC with the relay input of the same power IC. If the input is enabled, the status should return a high value. However if the input is enabled and the status returns a low value, the software detects a fault. All ICs are checked by this function and the results are packed into a CAN message. To communicate with other systems in the car, URE uses the CAN protocol with self-designed CAN messages. Therefore a separate function is implemented to build such a package and to send it. The CAN messages containing the status of all ICs are sent back to the system which sent the request message.

III. DESGIN A. Thermal design Calculations showed that the PCB surface needs to be at least 90cm2 and because the heat sink is the top of the casing, its baseplate needs to be even larger. Since no perfect heat sink for these dimensions could be found, a slightly larger heat sink is used that is modified to the right dimensions. The heat sink used is the AAVID EW/B/100, which has a thermal resistance of 1.1oC/W according to the manufacturer [5]. The dimensions of the baseplate of this heat sink are 100x150x5mm (LxWxH) and the fins are 20mm high. This heat sink is cut to a width of 125mm, the other dimensions are unaltered. To calculate the thermal resistance of the modified heat sink in various situations, the thermal resistance given by the manufacturer has been validated with the following equations first [1]: ( )

[(

) ]

The thermal resistance calculated from these equations has a value of 1.13oC/W, which matches the thermal resistance given by the manufacturer. In these equations Rconv is the thermal resistance due to convection whereas Rrad is the thermal resistance due to radiation. Rth is the total thermal resistance of the heat sink when convection

and radiation are combined. Aconv is the convection surface, which is defined as the surface of all fins and twice the baseplate added together. Arad is the total radiation surface, which is defined as twice the baseplates surface and twice a fins surface added together. Fred is a reduction factor related to the distance between the fins of the heat sink which has a value of 0.8 for the heat sink used [1]. T is the difference between the ambient and the heat sinks temperature (Tamb and Tcase). The parameters in the equations have been adjusted for T and the dimensions used in the fuseboxs design. T can be calculated from:
( ( ) )

Where Pdiss is the total dissipated power by the power ICs. The thermal resistance given by the manufacturer is only valid for T = 100oC and the original dimensions. With the correct dimensions and T, the thermal resistance for every combination of Tamb and Tcase can be found with the same equations used to validate the value in the datasheet.

power dissipated in the power ICs is a function of the current flowing through the ICs. The maximum power is dissipated when the output of the IC is short circuited: a voltage drop of 12V across the IC and a limited current of 0.8A result in a power dissipation of 9.6W. The maximum current drawn by systems in the car will be around 4A which results in a power dissipation of around 1.04W. The model has been used to predict the junction temperature of the power ICs. For safety reasons an approximate junction temperature of 100oC (5%) is desired in the situation that 4 ICs are short circuited. To obtain a junction temperature of exactly 100oC the model predicted a maximum desired Rth of 1.18oC/W in this situation. Therefore a heat sink with Rth of 1.1oC/W has been chosen. The equations showed that after the heat sink has been modified a Rth of 1.37oC/W is achieved in the given situation, which would result in a junction temperature of 102.8oC according to the model. This is within the allowable safety margins. To optimize cooling due to convection, the heat sink must be placed with the cooling fins horizontal facing upwards [1]. Therefore the entire case has to be mounted in the car in that same direction. B. Electrical design The basic structure of the electrical design of the system remained the same as that of the previous fusebox. As shown in Figure 2, the system consists of power ICs which have inputs to activate them, a microcontroller which reads the inputs and the status pins of the power ICs and a CAN interface to communicate with other systems, such as a data logger, telemetry unit and dashboard display.
Error LEDs

Figure 1 Thermal model for two power ICs.

In order to check the thermal steady state behaviour of the system and to calculate the desired thermal resistance of the heat sink, a thermal model has been made. It relates the power dissipated by the power ICs to the temperature rise via the thermal resistance of the used components. The model is shown in Figure 1 for two power ICs. For every power IC in the system a similar section is added. In the model Rjp represents the thermal resistance from junction to package whereas Rja is the thermal resistance from junction to ambient when the casing is opened because the casing of the actual system will be opened when the temperature measurements are taken. The values for both Rjp and Rja can be found in the ICs datasheet [2]. Rgf is the thermal resistance of the gap filler used between the IC and the heat sink [3]. The
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Switch inputs

Power ICs

Power

out Status Microcontroller Error message

CAN bus CAN interface

Figure 2 Block diagram for fusebox.

The microcontroller that is chosen for the fusebox is the Microchip PIC18F4580. The major advantage of this chip is that it has CAN support on chip [4]. Therefore no separate CAN controller, which has to be programmed separately, is needed.

A major improvement with respect to the previous fusebox design is the introduction of LEDs that indicate the status of each power IC, even if the system is not connected to CAN. Red error LEDs are used, instead of green OK LEDs. This is done for two reasons. First of all, under normal operation the LEDs are all off, so the power consumption of the total system is significantly reduced. As one LED uses 65 mW, the total power consumption of 15 green OK LEDs being on would be 0.975W, whereas the error LEDs will use no power if all systems are OK. The second reason is that one green LED being turned off in a row of glowing green LEDs is easier to miss than one red LED turned on on its own. The other adjustment to the electrical schematic is the usage of different power ICs which results in a more flexible system. The new design uses power ICs that are available in different current values using the same package, so the PCB can stay the same for every desired configuration. The current configuration uses STMicroelectronics VN750 chips, which have a typical current rating of 9A. STMicroelectronics also has the VN800 and VN820 with the same package and pin-out. These have typical current ratings of 2A and 13A respectively and are interchangeable with the VN750 without any further modifications to the electrical schematic. This makes the hardware more flexible. C. PCB and casing design The fusebox has been designed as one complete system and the PCB and the casing have been designed at the same time. In this way the dimensions of the system could be optimized while maintaining the required cooling capabilities. The casing is built from a standard heat sink and casing, which are modified to suit the systems needs. This is both cheaper and easier to produce than milling a custom casing, being a great advantage for URE. The heat sink is used as the top of the casing, so that the PCB can be mounted directly to the heat sink. In order to cool the power ICs, the PCB had to be designed such that these ICs are located on the back, as is shown in Figure 3.

In this way the power ICs are cooled directly on their package. The casing is made out of black anodized aluminium because of the beneficial thermal properties of this material. This results in a total weight of 700grams. The fact that this material is not as lightweight as for example carbon fibre (of which the other casings for URE are produced) is less important for this system than the cooling properties of the material. For the bottom of the casing an enclosure is chosen which should be as small as possible. Its minimum size is dictated by the large connector for the power outputs. Unfortunately, no smaller connector can be used because of the high currents that flow through it. In order to gain space, a cut-out in the PCB is made in which the connector can be placed. The dimensions of the total casing are 100x125x60mm (LxWxH). Due to the heavy vibrations in a race car, tests have been performed with different PCBs in a car. These tests show that surface-mounted devices (SMD) are more reliable in a vibrating environment than through-hole components. Therefore all the components used in the design of the fusebox PCB are SMD components, except for the connectors. The connectors are panel-mounted for reliability. In order to be able to see the LEDs when the casing is mounted in the car, a piggyback PCB with SMD LEDs has been designed. This is shown in Figure 3. The piggyback design is chosen for reliability in the vibrating car, in this way it is possible to place the LEDs perpendicular to the PCB whilst withstanding the vibrations in the car. Holes were drilled in the casing and filled with light guides in order to prevent bleeding of light between LEDs. The final design of the casing and PCB are shown in Figure 4.

Power IC Piggyback with LEDs

Figure 3 Power ICs on the back of the PCB and piggyback PCB with LEDs. 4

Figure 4 PCB mounted on the heat sink together with the bottom of the casing.

D. Software An advantage of the PIC18F4580 is that it comes with an easy to use programming environment in which the controller can be programmed using standard C code. The main routine for the fusebox consists of a main loop which constantly checks every CAN message on the bus and a check routine that checks the status of every power IC. Every system on the CAN bus has its own CAN identifier. When a CAN message with the fuseboxs identifier is received, the main loop will check if it is a request message. Request messages are sent by the display on the dashboard, the telemetry unit and the data logger. If a request message is received, the check routine checks the status of every power IC at that time. It checks both the input and status pins and compares them. This results in a two bit status code per IC: 00: IC is switched off. 01: IC is in normal operation mode. 10: IC is in fault mode. 11: IC has to be rechecked. These codes are packed together into CAN messages, which are then sent to the requesting device. From measurements it became clear that the status output of the VN750 power IC has an undesirable waveform when the IC operated in current limitation mode. This waveform is an effect of the thermal shutdown of the power IC [2]. This is temperature based, if the ICs temperature is reduced, the output is enabled again, if the short circuit is not resolved the IC will return to thermal shutdown and the ICs temperature will rise again. This is shown in Figure 5 for a single IC in current limitation.

shows that the peak duration is smaller than 0.5ms and the waiting period of the power IC is much longer for a single IC with a short circuited output. Therefore a recheck after 0.5ms will ensure that the software can always detect this waveform for a single IC in thermal shutdown, however this does not necessarily hold true for multiple ICs in thermal shutdown mode. IV. RESULTS A. Thermal performance The thermal model shows that the modified heat sink performs well and it will be possible to keep the car in operation, even if four systems in total have short circuits allowing continued operation of the car. However if more than four systems in the car are short circuited, the car is shut down. To validate the model and to ensure the thermal performance of the actual system, temperature measurements have been carried out. The system was stressed in various situations and the temperatures were measured with an infrared (IR) camera. For the case and chip temperatures, the highest temperature of the IR images, as shown in Figure 6, were taken. The following configurations of loads and short circuits for each output channel were used: A: 11x 20W, 4x 50W loads B: 15x 20W loads C: 10x 20W, 4x 50W loads, 1 short circuit D: 13x 20W loads, 2 short circuits E: 11x 20W loads, 4 short circuits Situation A reflects failure-free operation with maximum load attached. This is a worst-case scenario, as the actual systems in the URE06 race car will not use this much power simultaneously. Situation B is a test where more smaller loads are connected. Situations C and D can occur when one or two system(s) in the car are short circuited. In these situations, the car will still be able to finish the race. Situation E is the maximum allowable number of short circuits before the car is shut down. As an example the measurements for situation A are shown in Figure 6. The temperatures measured on the actual system were compared with the temperatures given by the model. The results show that the model is accurate. The ambient temperature used in the model is 25oC, which is the same as the ambient temperature at which the measurements were carried out (see Figure 6). The comparison of the measurements and the model can be found in Figure 7 and 8. In Figure 7 the temperature of the systems heat sink is shown whereas Figure 8 shows the temperature at the package of the ICs, which is not the same as the ICs
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Figure 5 Status pin showing unwanted waveform when a single power IC is in thermal shutdown mode.

Because of this waveform, a chip in thermal shutdown can potentially give a false positive value when checked by the check routine in the software. To overcome this problem a software loop was made that rechecks an IC after 0.5ms if the status has a high value and the IC was in failure mode during the previous check. Figure 5

junction temperature because it is not possible to measure inside the ICs with the IR camera.

The system using the current heat sink is relatively heavy for a race car. The size and weight of the system can be reduced significantly by using a smaller heat sink. The system can now handle four short circuits at a time, without the need to shut down the car. If URE chooses to allow fewer short circuits, the heat sinks size and weight can be reduced. The model used to validate the thermal performance does not account for the placement of the power ICs. In the situation that two ICs next to each other go into current limitation, much power is dissipated locally in the system. The temperature will rise more at that particular point, while the temperature will be lower in the rest of the PCB. This is probably one of the main reasons for the differences between the model and the measured temperature in some situations. The way the CAN protocol in the URE car is currently set up dictates that the fusebox only sends its status when it receives a request message. If a fault is detected, but no request messages are received, it will only be shown via the LEDs. However, if the CAN hierarchy in the car is changed, the fusebox could check the power ICs every clock cycle. As soon as a fault is detected, the fusebox could send an interrupt message and the failure will be received by one of the systems connected to CAN. To implement this, for the fusebox only the software has to be adapted. It has not been tested what will happen with the waveform of the status output shown in Figure 5 if multiple ICs on the PCB are short circuited. In that situation the temperature will rise even faster and the cooling down process will slow down. Therefore a recheck after 0.5ms will not ensure that the software can always detect this waveform. A possible solution would be to implement a hardware RC-filter at the status output of each IC to filter the waveform, in that case no software loop is required. REFERENCES
[1] MOHAN, Ned, UNDELAND, Tore M., ROBBINS, William P., Power electronics: converters, applications, and design. 2nd ed., pages 730 -743, Chichester: Wiley, 1995. [2] http://www.st.com/internet/com/TECHNICAL_RE SOURCES/TECHNICAL_LITERATURE/DATASHEET/CD00 001991.pdf, viewed on 06.07 2011 [3] http://docseurope.electrocomponents.com/webdocs/0e45/0 900766b80e453b8.pdf, page 37, viewed on 05.07 2011 [4] http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/Devic eDoc/39637d.pdf, viewed on 06.07 2011 [5] http://nl.rs-online.com/web/5074933.html, viewed on 11.07 2011

Figure 6 Case (left) and chip (right) temperature measurements for situation A. Case temperature (C) 80 60 40 20 0 A B C Situation D E

Tcase,model Tcase

Figure 7 Measured case temperature vs. case temperature in model in various situations. 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 A B C Situation D E Maximum chip temperature (C) Tmax

Tmax,model

Figure 8 Measured maximum chip temperature vs. maximum chip temperature in model in various situations.

B. Reliability After driving several test kilometres with the race car equipped with the fusebox, no gravel or any other damaging parts where found inside the casing. The used SMD components stayed perfectly in place, despite the heavy vibrations in the car. The car also finished the endurance race in the first event of the 2011 Formula Student competition, URE scored an overall 3th position. V. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS The system which has been designed, built and tested meets all the specifications and requirements. However there is still some improvement possible.
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