Training structure:
The duration of the training is 2 days.
Training objective:
The objective of the training is to acquire the basic abilities about controller design for DC/DC power converters using analog or digital devices for the implementation. Starting with a basic study of the control problem, design procedures based on software tools like PSIM and SmartCtrl will be applied and illustrated through practical design cases.
Intended audience:
The training course is recommended to everybody interested in the theoretical aspects and practical design issues of analog and digital control of dc-dc converters. Having previous experience in power electronics and circuit simulation is useful, but beginners with no background in those topics will also benefit from the training.
Topics:
Day 1:
- Section I: Fundamentals of DC-DC converters, modeling and control.
- Introduction
- Steady-state operation of basic topologies
- Elements of the control loops and negative feedback
- The stability problem
- Switching converter modeling fundamentals and techniques
- Section II: Modeling and Control of a Buck converter with input filter
- Introduction
- Modelling
- Voltage loop design. Calculation of compensator with SmartCtrl
- PSIM Simulation results 1
- Influence of input filter
- PSIM Simulation results 2
- Section III: Feed-forward techniques applied to DC-DC converters
- Feed-forward concept
- Large-signal feed-forward
- Small-signal feed-forward
- Converters plants with and without feed-forward
- PSIM simulations
- Section IV: Modeling and analog control of the Flyback DC-DC converter in CCM and DCM operation modes
- DC/DC Flyback converter basic operation
- Simulating the switching model of the Flyback converter
- Average model of the Flyback converter
- Simulating the Simulating the Flyback average model average model
- Analytical calculation of the small-signal model of the Flyback converter (Gvd )
- Open-loop simulations. Bode plot from PSIM simulations
- Design of the control with an opto-coupler plus the IC TL431
- Closed-loop PSIM simulations
Day 2:
- Section V: The digital control loop
- Review of discrete signals and systems: sampling, aliasing, Z-transform, etc.
- The digital compensator
- The Digital PWM
- Sampling in power converters
- Delays in the digital control loop
- Quantization effects: limit cycling
- Digital Control implementation: Microcontrolers, DSP, FPGA and SoC
- Main differences between digital and analog control. Advantages and limitations
- Section VI: Basic example of digitally controlled bidirectional buck converter
- Introduction
- Buck converter model for digital control
- Filtering and sampling effects
- Current loop design. Calculation of compensator with SmartCtrl
- PSIM Simulation results
- Section VII: Complete digital design of Flyback converter: SmartCtrl design PSIM simulation and HW experiments
- Description of the hardware set up: Flyback Converter and SoC based digital control
- SoC control parametrization with SmartCtrl
- Experiments: input voltage steps, reference steps, load steps, etc.
Methodology:
The overall methodology is based on theoretical explanation on main concepts and details followed by practical implementation of the complete design procedure: controller design by means of SmartCtrl, PSIM simulations and hardware validation by means of a scale – down prototype.
- 60% theoretical contents
- 20% practical exercises by means of guided PSIM simulations and SmartCtrl designs
- 10% exercises using a hardware demonstrator
A complete set of SmartCtrl and PSIM exercises already developed will be provided to the audience together with the rest of course materials. During practical exercises, attendees will be asked to change some component values and/or modify the schematics of the provided examples and carry out simulations. For hardware experiments SmartCtrl console will be used to modify control parameters of a digitally controlled Flyback converter. Attendees will experiment different effects of the digital control design by means of input voltage and output current step changes. HW demonstrators possible for Topics 1 & 3. Three steps methodology:
- SmartCtrl design
- PSIM simulation
- Hardware demonstrator (up to 5 HW boards will be available)