Home Page of EE 569 Special Topics In Power Electronics
Spring Semester 2010


Instructor: Ahmet M. Hava


Contact Info: see my webpage


Lecture Place & Time    : Wednesday 9:40-12:30  @ D135

Office Hours:  TBD



Announcements:





Course Description: Power electronics is a crossdiciplinary engineering field with many interesting high technology dimensions. In this course several important dimensions of this field will be covered in depth.
    One dimension involves semiconductor power switches. Semiconductor power switches can have turn on and off times in the orders of nanoseconds, they can have current ratings with 250kA, and voltage ratings in the range of several kV, and thermal operating limits up to 300 C.  IGBT, MOSFET, BJT, SCR, Diode, IGCT, MCT, etc. are all power electronic switches with interesting attributes. One part of this course will involve the characteristics and attributes of such devices.
    One dimension of power electronics involves topologies. Depending on the type of the input voltage/current source characteristics and desired output voltage/current characteristics, a specific power electronic converter topology is selected. There exist a large variety of converter topologies and we must be able to judge which converter is the best for the application in mind. Throughout this course various interesting power converter topologies will be introduced and discussed. Methods that establish the performance criteria for the converters will be described. Approaches for topology derivation will also be taught.
    One dimension of power electronics involves modelling via analytical approaches or computer simulation of a power electronic circuit/system.  In this course modelling and simulation techniques will also be covered. Power converter system simulations will be conducted via PSpice and other available software.
    Yet another dimension of power electronics involves controlling the power electronic systems. Given a power electronic circuit and whatever else connected to its input and output terminals, the total system can be considered as a complex control system. Once the system performance criteria is defined, the control rules for the system can be developed and implemented. The implementation platform can be analog or digital, hardware or hardware+software. Carrying the control technqiue from the computer simulation to the hardware realtime system is also another subject of interest. In this course, for all the power converter systems considered, control rules and implementation techniques will be covered in detail.
    The last prime dimension which is covered in this course is the test and application dimension. The field of application for power electronics covers a very wide range. The power and size range begins with milliwatts and centimeters (such as the cell phone DC/DC converter power management chip) and expand to multimegawatts in utility power electronic devices such as HVDC transmission systems.  Industrial environments are rich of PWM inverter and electric motor drives. Residental areas are rich of uninterruptable power supplies and switch mode power supplies (such as those in our computers). Utilities are rich of power quality equipments such as  thyristor controlled reactors, static var compensators, active (and/or passive) filters, and so on.  In this course the intention is not to include every single converter  and application but to focus on those of utmost  practicality or originality. 

 


Prerequisite

Knowlede of Basic Power Electronics (EE463+464 or equivalent), Electromechanical Energy Conversion, (EE361-EE362 or equivalents), and Drives (EE462) is assumed.

Students who have taken EE462 + EE463 + EE464 or their equivalents are good candidates for this course. Students with weak power electronics background are not a good candidate for the course as this course involves advanced research subjects and the course is not an introductory power electronics course!

Knowledge of
 Simplorer, PSpice, Matlab-Simulink, ACSL, MathCad, or other computer simulation programs is a plus.

If you do not have any simulation experience at the time you enter this course, you will experience difficulties and spend considerable amount of time to learn the simulation languages. Therefore, it is advised that students who will take this course shall plan ahead and learn Simplorer and if possible Simulink too.

 


Syllabus
preliminary syllabus


Textbooks

There is a large number of books that cover various aspects of power electronics.
In this course those not comfortable with the basics can benefit from the following  books the most:

P. T. Krein, Elements of Power Electronics,  Oxford University Press, 1998.
P. Wood, Switching Power Converters,  R.E. Krieger Publishing Co. 1981.
B. J. Baliga, Power Semiconductor Devices, PWM Publishing Co., 1996.
J.G. Kassakian, M.F. Schlecht, G.C. Verghese, Principles of Power Electronics.
N. Mohan, T. M. Undeland, W.P. Robbins, Power Electronics, John Wiley Publishing Co., 1995.
R.W. Erickson and D. Maksimovic, Fundamentals of Power Electronics, Kluwer, 2001.

Longer list of supplementary power electronics books will be posted later.

The subjects of the course will be based on papers from recent power electronics conferences and journals. The most respected power electronics conference and journal are IEEE PESC conference and IEEE Trans on Power Electronics.  In addition the European Power Electronics Conference (EPE), Applied Power Electronics Conference (IEEE-APEC), and IEEE-IAS conference and IEEE Trans on Industry Applications are other sources to resort to. In addition some papers from the following edited books may be included:

Control in Power Electronics: Selected Problems, Edited by M. Kazimierkowski, R. Krishnan, F. Blaabjerg, Academic Press, 2002.
Modern Power Electronics: Evolution, Technology, and Applications, Edited by B.K. Bose, IEEE Press, 1992.


Homeworks

The homework and project load of this course is heavy!

 

Substantial part of your grade will be based on the work you do in the projects and homeworks.
Therefore, it is vital that you are equipped with good computer simulation skills and you have a very strong fundamental power electronics background.
Then you shall spend a lot of time on the assignments!


PROJECT

 

A term project assigned to each student is to be completed by the end of the semester.
The goal of the project is to develop research conduction skills in the field of power electronics.
The project subject is to be decided based on the field of interest of the student and the instructor (must be within the scope of the course).
The project grade comprises a significant portion of the total course grade.
At the end of  the term, in the project the student must present the ability to model, simulate, analyze, control, and design a power electronic circuit.
The student must be able to collect literature, understand the ideas in the papers, implement and verify the idea of some papers, and finally develop his own thoughts.


In the project report (everything in electronic format, on a usb flash memory or cd):

1) include the list of references, also submit electronic copy of the references, label them appropriately. That is the paper file name should not be something such as 01120003 but should be named after the first author lastname, such as "lee-pesc2003.pdf".
2) include the computer simulation programs and label them appropriately.
3) in the graphics, all the figures must have a title and label indicating the names of the variables in the graphics, the scales, etc.
4) the text must be written in the conventional approach (abstract, introduction, ..., conclusions and references) and must be written such that it is easy to follow!
5) Do not submit your report in PDF format! I need to write comments on the report, PDF does not allow me to do that!  Ms WORD is the preferred medium for the report.
6) Do not copy text from the papers. If you use some figures, definitions, etc., you must cite (refer to) them appropriately, otherwise your action is unethical (that is nothing different from cheating)!
7) Do not write things that you do not understand, make sure you think before you write!




 


Announcements

paper writing format: IEEE document sample: paper-sample