Power Electronics

Last semester given: 2022-23 Spring

Textbook: Mohan, Undeland, Robbins, “Power Electronics: Converters, Application and Design”, Wiley and Sons

LTSpice is used as the CAD tool of the course. DipTrace is used to design printed-circuit-boards. Students need to complete two projects.

In the Spring of 2014, the first project was about designing and building a buck or a boost converter. The output voltages are +3.3V, +5V, +12V, +24V, +50V, and +100V, while the input voltage is in the range of +33V to +38.5V. The output powers are up to 10W. Project phases were circuit design, schematic entry, PCB design and measurements, each with a deadline one week apart.

The same semester, the second project was about designing and building a DC-AC inverter from a +50V DC input with full-bridge configuration. 50Hz or 60Hz AC output voltage peak value was 48V. Project phases were circuit design, schematic entry, PCB design, and measurements.

In the Fall of 2016, the project was about designing a flyback converter running from the universal line voltage (85-265VAC). The project involves the design of the transformer on a ferrite E core, PCB design, and measurements of the performance. As the switching IC, the students used TNY278 from Power Integrations.

In the Fall of 2018, the project was also about designing a flyback converter using the universal line voltage. The students used LNK562 as the switching IC. A ferrite E-core with a 0.1mm air gap from EPCOS was used. The flyback converter does not have a power-consuming snubber network. Instead, the primary capacitance of the transformer is carefully adjusted to limit the peak voltage.

In the Spring 2023, the students designed boost, buck, and buck-boost DC-DC converters using MC34063A. All students had different input and output voltages.

Subjects covered:

  1. Review of Electric and Magnetic Circuits (Ch 3)
  2. DC to DC switch mode converters (Ch 7)
  3. Analysis and design of inductors and transformers (Ch 30)
  4. DC to sinusoidal AC (Ch 8)
  5. Line frequency AC to Uncontrolled DC (Ch 5)
  6. Line frequency AC to Controlled DC (Ch 6)

TNY278FlybackConv

Flyback converter of one student