Combined power electronic circuit and control loop simulation: why?And how?

摘要

Power electronic systems provide a considerable challenge to CADnpackages due to their strong nonlinearities and widely varying timenconstants. This is particularly so if an attempt is made to simulate thenentire system including the power circuit, load characteristics, controlnloops and thermal effects. Due to the lack of available tools andndesktop computing power it has been normal practice to study each ofnthese aspects independently. This has limited the effectiveness of CADnfor power electronic systems since important interactions are inevitablyneither overlooked or simplified to the point that they are unrealistic.nIn addition, considerable ingenuity has been required on the part of thenuser to partition the problem in such a way that meaningful results arenobtained in a reasonable computation time. The situation is howevernchanging and tools are now becoming available which enable us to getncloser to a “complete system” simulation. In this paper wenconcentrate on combined simulations of power electronic circuitsn(including representations for the load and supply) and their controlnsystems principally for the purpose of control system design andnvalidation prior to prototyping. The need for a combined approach isnillustrated with reference to the design of an active filter system. An“wish list” of desirable features for a CAD package isnoutlined. Some commonly used programs are compared and our experiencesnin applying them to this problem are discussed