Reliability of DC-link capacitor in pulsed power supply for accelerator magnet

Capacitors are widely used in pulsed magnet power supplies to reduce ripple voltage, store energy, and decrease power variation. In this study, DC-link capacitors in pulsed power supplies were investigated. By deriving an analytical method for the capacitor current on the H-bridge topology side, the root-mean-square value of the capacitor current was calculated, which helps in selecting the DC-link capacitors. The proposed method solves this problem quickly and with high accuracy. The current reconstruction of the DC-link capacitor is proposed to avoid structural damage in the capacitor’s current measurement, and the capacitor’s hot spot temperature and temperature rise are calculated using the FFT transform. The test results showed that the error between the calculated and measured temperature increases was within 1.5 ◦C. Finally, the lifetime of DC-link capacitors was predicted based on Monte Carlo analysis. The proposed method can evaluate the reliability of DC-link capacitors in a non-isolated switching pulsed power supply for accelerators and is also applicable to film capacitors.