Railways and EVs Are Demanding DC Filtering Capacitors That Don’t Quit KYOCERA AVX Answers

Railway traction systems and EV powertrains are brutal environments for electronic components. They’re subject to high power, high temperature, high shock, and high vibration and they’re expected to keep running reliably for decades. The capacitors doing DC filtering duty in those applications have historically been either oversized and expensive, or compact but unreliable. KYOCERA AVX says their new FFLK series finally resolves that tradeoff.

The FFLK series launches with cylindrical aluminum form factors, dry or wet metallized polypropylene film dielectrics, and a dielectric film technology that KYOCERA AVX developed and patented back in 1976. The key feature is controlled self-healing: when a dielectric breakdown occurs, the adjacent electrodes vaporize to isolate the fault, preventing short circuits and eliminating catastrophic failures. The capacitor continues operating just with gradually declining capacitance over time.

Variants with dry segmented metallized polypropylene film cover 9001,900VDC, while wet versions reach 2,0003,800VDC. Capacitance values span 253,020µF ±10%, with case sizes from 130340mm tall and 85116mm in diameter. The series is rated for 100,000-hour lifetimes within defined parameters, and compliant with IEC, UL, EN, and RoHS standards.

Product Marketing Manager Perrin Hardee put it plainly: “The controlled self-healing capabilities of our dielectric film far outperform the basic self-healing capabilities intrinsic to all dielectric films.” In traction applications where a capacitor failure might mean a train stopping in an inconvenient location, that distinction matters a great deal.