Educational reconfigurable platform for courses on power electronics

Abstract

Power electronics applications have become ubiquitous among electronic products today. As a consequence, a great increase on the demand of professionals by the industry has been observed. This has a direct consequence on the electrical and electronics engineering curricula, as they have to meet the requirements of an industry with an increasing number of products requiring power electronics solutions. Power electronics teaching is usually divided into three areas, as well as it is in other electronics knowledge areas: lecture-based sessions, circuit simulation sessions and practical training. The aim of this paper is to propose a specific tool for the practical training sessions. It is based on a reconfigurable educational platform which allows a fast experimentation with different power converter topologies. The proposed approach presents an improved hands-on training, which allows the student reinforcing theoretical concepts while facing some practical aspects as measurements techniques and safety issues.