Digital SCR Control Box for Educational Laboratory

A blue box has been designed to introduce the silicone controlled rectifier (SCR) to power electronics students. SCRs are useful in many real-world applications, and are conceptually important in a student\u27s understanding of power converters. The box is highly flexible in application, and its internal design is simple enough to explain to students. Experiments are shown, both of the type commonly used in the laboratory and of the type used for demonstrations. The box has also been designed to be suitable for research purposes and line voltage applications

Modern Laboratory-Based Education for Power Electronics and Electric Machines

The study of modern energy conversion draws upon a broad range of knowledge and often requires a fair amount of experience. This suggests that laboratory instruction should be an integral component of a power electronics and electric machines curriculum. However, before a single watt can be processed in a realistic way, the student must understand not only the operation of conversion systems but also more advanced concepts such as control theory, speed and position sensing, switching signal generation, gate drive isolation, circuit layout, and other critical issues. Our approach is to use a blue-box module where these details are pre-built for convenience, but not hidden from the students inside a black box. Recent improvements to our blue-box modules are described in this paper and include a dual-MOSFET control box with independently isolated FET devices, a triple silicon controlled rectifier control box, a discretely built, high quality pulse-width modulation inverter, a small discrete brushless dc drive system, and a high-performance computer-controlled brushless dc dynamometer motor drive system. Complete details, sufficient to allow the reader to duplicate these designs, are publicly available

Blue-Box Approach to Power Electronics and Machines Educational Laboratories

Our approach to laboratory education in power electronics and electric machines is presented. The approach centers upon blue-box laboratory components, that aid the student in rapid experiment assembly without disguising important aspects of the hardware. Several example experiments are presented. Schematics and construction techniques for the hardware are publicly available

A Framework for the Analysis and Design of Vector Controllers for Induction Machines

176 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006.The development of controllers for induction machines has been incremental rather than revolutionary. The traditional current-flux model is partially responsible for this, because the control objectives (torque and flux magnitude) are implicit to the model. This work makes contributions to the understanding and performance improvement of induction machine drive systems by establishing an alternative framework for the analysis and design of vector controllers. Two elements integrate this framework: an alternative induction machine model that explicitly considers the control objectives, and consideration of the multiple time scale behavior of the motor based on singular perturbation techniques. Using the framework, established controllers are analyzed. In particular, direct torque control (DTC) is formally derived, avoiding any heuristic arguments. New controllers are also proposed, which avoid the sensitivity to the leakage factor of the machine. By doing so, performance is directly tied to machine characteristics. These controllers (together with DTC) can be classified as high-performance controllers for high-performance induction motors. Closed-loop characteristics of the proposed controllers are analyzed in detail. The use of flux observers is also considered, with analysis results that extend to vector controllers in general. Performance of the proposed controllers is evaluated in detail, both by simulation and experimentation. Of the new controllers, the stator-flux-based one proved to be a viable alternative to field oriented control (FOC).U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD

Live power line and lead proximity estimation via real time equipment mountable electric field sensor.

Printout.Thesis (M.S.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2003.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 124-125)U of I OnlyUIUC only access ETD

Modular inverter for advanced control applications.

Includes bibliographical references