Aspiring Power Electronics Engineers Must Master Four Aspects Of Converter Design

Focus:

Power converters are not trivial to design. They involve analog and digital circuits; discrete-time, sampled feedback loops; parasitic elements in components that significantly affect circuit behavior; and control models of the nonlinear element (the PWM switch) that have taken decades to refine. This article presents a brief overview of power converter design, describing four essential aspects of this activity-circuit waveforms, magnetics, parasitic resonance, and control-and highlighting some of the complexities of converter design. This article also identifies some of the skills engineers need to overcome converter design challenges. The issues explored here will be germane to many power converters that would be considered mainstream. Among the many points made in this article, the author argues that to be competent at power electronics, one must understand the underlying control theory and be able to analyze converter operation in various domains (s, z, w, etc.) rather than solely relying on simulation-oriented design.

What you’ll learn:

• How to understand what skills and knowledge are essential for mastery of power converter design

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Author & Publication:

Dennis Feucht, Innovatia Laboratories, Cayo, Belize, How2Power Today, Aug 31 2011

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