A New Approach for Teaching Power Electronics Converter Experiments

Abstract

Abstract-This paper presents a new methodological approach to teaching power electronics converter experiments. This approach is based on a reconfigurable hardware-software platform for use in converter experiments in a basic power electronics course. This course is an optional subject, and, therefore, the experiments need to motivate the students. The platform is controlled by software (made in a LabVIEW environment) run on a PC. The student can control the fundamental parameters of the selected converter topology through the user interface and, with a little work, can compare the results with a real circuit. An example of use of the methodology in an inverter experiment is included.

Diseño de Herramientas Didácticas Enfocadas al Aprendizaje de Sistemas de Control Utilizando Instrumentación Virtual

“…En (Jiménez et al, 2005) se presentó un nuevo enfoque para la enseñanza experimental de convertidores electrónicos de potencia a nivel licenciatura, el cual se basa en una plataforma de software y hardware reconfigurable diseñada en LabVIEW. En (Rodriguez et al, 2011) se utilizó LabVIEW para analizar y controlar la velocidad de un motor trifásico en un curso de Ingeniería, permitiendo a los estudiantes emplear hardware de bajo costo.…”

Power Electronics Open-Source Educational Platform

“…This methodology has the advantage of allowing the teacher to present the contents to a wide audience. However, it presents several drawbacks in the case of power electronics, such as: how to show the intervals in which each device is in the on/off state; how to illustrate the dynamic behavior of the system; and finally, how to demonstrate the complex waveforms of the currents for each interval [13]- [15]. Moreover, these kinds of resources are static, involving minimal interaction and thus they cannot exemplify the effects of changing the load and control parameters over the waveforms.…”

Interactive Power Electronics Tool for Undergraduate Laboratories and Research Purposes

“…This approach is used by many modern papers such as [16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28].…”