Entry requirements

120 credits within Science/Technology, including Electromagnetism and Power Engineering.

Learning outcomes

The course will provide the students with a foundation in analysis and design of power electronic circuits. It will allow the students to have a familiarity with basic topologies and prepares them to analyse more complex systems with additional reading.

• explain the static and dynamic characteristics of power semiconductor devices.
• explain the working of uncontrolled and controlled rectifiers and calculate the input, output and device currents.
• calculate harmonics in the output and input currents for rectifier operations.
• draw the waveforms and explain the operation of various modes of DC-DC converters.
• explain the modulation techniques and calculate the harmonic contents for common PWM techniques.
• simulate simple power electronic circuits using simulation packages like Spice and MATLAB/Simulink.
• conduct experiments with converters in order to validate the theoretical concepts.

Content

Overview of Power Semiconductor devices: Diodes, Thyristors, BJT, MOSFET, IGBT, etc.

Rectifiers: Diode rectifiers, phase controlled rectifiers, Effects of source inductance, Inverter mode operation, Harmonic analysis, continuous and discontinuous current modes.

DC-DC switch-mode converters: Control of DC-DC converters, Step-down, Step-Up, Buck-Boost and Full bridge DC-DC converter.

Switch mode DC- AC converters: Basic concepts, Pulse width modulation schemes. Harmonic analysis of different modulation techniques.

Selected Applications.

Instruction

Lectures and tutorials. Laboratory work combined with simulation exercises to reinforce the understanding of theory material.

Assessment

Written exam at the end of the course (3 credits), Approved laboratory exercises required (2 credits).