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 3.5.7 Type 2b—Proportional Plus a Pole
3.5.8 Type 3—Origin Pole Plus Two Coincident Zero-Pole Pairs
3.5.9 Selecting the Right Amplifier Type

3.6 An Easy Stabilization Tool—The k Factor

3.6.1 Type 1 Derivation
3.6.2 Type 2 Derivation
3.6.3 Type 3 Derivation

3.6.4 Stabilizing a Voltage-Mode Buck Converter with the k Factor

3.6.5 Conditional Stability
3.6.6 Independent Pole-Zero Placement
3.6.7 Crossing Over Right at the Selected Frequency
3.6.8 The k Factor versus Manual Pole-Zero Placement

3.6.9 Stabilizing a Current-Mode Buck Converter with the k Factor

3.6.10 The Current-Mode Model and Transient Steps
3.7 Feedback with the TL431
3.7.1 A Type 2 Amplifier Design Example with the TL431
3.7.2 A Type 3 Amplifier with the TL431
3.7.3 Biasing the TL431
3.7.4 The Resistive Divider
3.8 The Optocoupler
3.8.1 A Simplified Model
3.8.2 Extracting the Pole
3.8.3 Accounting for the Pole
3.9 Operational Transconductance Amplifiers
3.10 Shunt Regulators
3.10.1 SPICE Model of the Shunt Regulator
3.10.2 Quickly Stabilizing a Converter Using the Shunt Regulator
3.11 Small-Signal Responses with Psim and Simplis
What I Should Retain from This Chapter
References
Appendix 3A Automated Pole-Zero Placement
Appendix 3B A TL431 Spice Model
3B.1 A Behavioral TL431 Spice Model
3B.2 Cathode Current versus Cathode Voltage
3B.3 Output Impedance
3B.4 Open-Loop Gain
3B.5 Transient Test
3B.6 Model Netlist
Appendix 3C Type 2 Manual Pole-Zero Placement
Appendix 3D Understanding the Virtual Ground in Closed-Loop Systems
3D.1 Numerical Example
 3D.2 Loop Gain Is Unchanged
Chapter 4. Basic Blocks and Generic Switched Models

4.1 Generic Models for Faster Simulations

4.1.1 In-Line Equations
4.2 Operational Amplifiers
4.2.1 A More Realistic Model
4.2.2 A UC384X Error Amplifier
4.3 Sources with a Given Fan-Out
4.4 Voltage-Adjustable Passive Elements
4.4.1 The Resistor
4.4.2 The Capacitor
4.4.3 The Inductor
4.5 A Hysteresis Switch
4.6 An Undervoltage Lockout Block
4.7 Leading Edge Blanking
4.8 Comparator with Hysteresis
4.9 Logic Gates
4.10 Transformers
4.10.1 A Simple Saturable Core Model
4.10.2 Multioutput Transformers
4.11 Astable Generator
4.11.1 A Voltage-Controlled Oscillator
4.11.2 A Voltage-Controlled Oscillator Featuring Dead Time Control
4.12 Generic controllers
4.12.1 Current-Mode Controllers
4.12.2 Current-Mode Model with a Buck
4.12.3 Current-Mode Instabilities
4.12.4 The Voltage-Mode Model
4.12.5 The Duty Ratio Generation
4.12.6 A Quick Example with a Forward Converter
4.13 Dead Time Generation
4.14 Short-Pulse Generators
4.15 List of Generic Models
4.16 Convergence Options
What I Should Retain from This Chapter
References
Appendix 4A An Incomplete Review of the Terminology Used in Magnetic Designs
4A.1 Introduction
4A.2 Field Definition
4A.3 Permeability
 4A.4 Founding Laws
4A.5 Inductance
4A.6 Avoiding Saturation
Further Reading
Appendix 4B Feeding Transformer Models with Physical Values
4B.1 Understanding the Equivalent Inductor Model
4B.2 Determining the Physical Values of the Two-Winding T Model
4B.3 The Three-Winding T Model
References
Chapter 5. Simulations and Practical Designs of Nonisolated Converters

5.1 The Buck Converter

5.1.1 A 12-V, 4-A Voltage-Mode Buck from a 28-V Source
5.1.2 The ac Analysis
5.1.3 Transient Analysis
5.1.4 The Power Switch
5.1.5 The Diode
5.1.6 Output Ripple and Transient Response
5.1.7 Input Ripple
5.1.8 A 5-V, 10-A Current-Mode Buck from a Car Battery
5.1.9 The ac Analysis
5.1.10 Transient Analysis
5.1.11 A Synchronous Buck Converter
5.1.12 A Low-Cost Floating Buck Converter
5.1.13 Component Constraints for the CCM Buck Converter
5.2 The Boost Converter
5.2.1 A Voltage-Mode 48-V, 2-A Boost Converter from a Car Battery
5.2.2 The ac Analysis
5.2.3 Transient Analysis
5.2.4 A Current-Mode 5-V, 1-A Boost Converter from a Li-Ion Battery
5.2.5 The ac Analysis
5.2.6 Transient Analysis
5.2.7 Input Filter
5.2.8 Component Constraints for the Boost Converter
5.3 The Buck-Boost Converter
5.3.1 A Voltage-Mode 12-V, 2-A Buck-Boost Converter Powered from a Car Battery
5.3.2 The ac Analysis
5.3.3 Transient Analysis
5.3.4 A Discontinuous Current-Mode 12-V, 2-A Buck-Boost Converter Operating from a Car Battery
5.3.5 Ac Analysis
5.3.6 Transient Analysis
5.3.7 Component Constraints for the Buck-Boost Converter
 References
Appendix 5A The Boost in Discontinuous Mode, Design Equations
5A.1 Input Current
5A.2 Output Ripple Voltage
Chapter 6. Simulations and Practical Designs of Off-Line Converters—The Front End

6.1 The Rectifier Bridge

6.1.1 Capacitor Selection
6.1.2 Diode Conduction Time
6.1.3 Rms Current in the Capacitor
6.1.4 Current in the Diodes
6.1.5 Input Power Factor
6.1.6 A 100-W Rectifier Operated on Universal Mains
6.1.7 Hold-Up Time
6.1.8 Waveforms and Line Impedance
6.1.9 In-Rush Current
6.1.10 Voltage Doubler
6.2 Power Factor Correction
6.2.1 Definition of Power Factor
6.2.2 Nonsinusoidal Signals
6.2.3 A Link to the Distortion
6.2.4 Why Power Factor Correction?
6.2.5 Harmonic Limits
6.2.6 A Need for Storage
6.2.7 Passive PFC
6.2.8 Improving the Harmonic Content
6.2.9 The Valley-Fill Passive Corrector
6.2.10 Active Power Factor Correction
6.2.11 Different Techniques
6.2.12 Constant On-Time Borderline Operation
6.2.13 Frequency Variations in BCM
6.2.14 Averaged Modeling of the BCM Boost
6.2.15 Fixed-Frequency Average Current-Mode Control
6.2.16 Shaping the Current
6.2.17 Fixed-Frequency Peak Current-Mode Control
6.2.18 Compensating the Peak Current-Mode Control PFC
6.2.19 Average Modeling of the Peak Current-Mode PFC
6.2.20 Hysteretic Power Factor Correction
6.2.21 Fixed-Frequency DCM Boost
6.2.22 Flyback Converter
6.2.23 Testing the Flyback PFC
 6.3 Designing A Bcm Boost Pfc
6.3.1 Average Simulations
6.3.2 Reducing the Simulation Time
6.3.3 Cycle-by-Cycle Simulation
6.3.4 The Follow-Boost Technique
What I Should Retain from This Chapter
References
Appendix 6A Diode and Bulk Capacitor Current Constraints: A Different View
6A.1 Design Example
6A.2 Selecting a Normalized Value for the Bulk Capacitor
Appendix 6B A Small-Signal Model of the BCM Boost Converter Power Factor Corrector Operated in Voltage- or Current-Mode Control
6B.1 Current-Mode Control
References
Chapter 7. Simulations and Practical Designs of Flyback Converters

7.1 An Isolated Buck-Boost

7.2 Flyback Waveforms, No Parasitic Elements
7.3 Flyback Waveforms with Parasitic Elements
7.4 Flyback Converter Operated in Quasi-Resonance
7.4.1 Deriving the Switching Frequency
7.5 Observing the Drain Signal, No Clamping Action
7.6 Clamping the Drain Excursion
7.7 Dcm, Looking for Valleys
7.8 Designing the Clamping Network
7.8.1 The RCD Configuration

7.8.2 Selecting kc

7.8.3 Curing the Leakage Ringing

7.8.4 Which Diode to Select?
7.8.5 Beware of Voltage Variations
7.8.6 TVS Clamp
7.9 Two-Switch Flyback
7.10 Active Clamp
7.10.1 Design Example
7.10.2 Simulation Circuit
7.11 Small-Signal Response of the Flyback Topology
7.11.1 DCM Voltage Mode
7.11.2 CCM Voltage Mode
7.11.3 DCM Current Mode
7.11.4 CCM Current Mode
7.12 Practical Considerations about the Flyback
7.12.1 Controller Start-Up
7.12.2 Start-Up Resistor Design Example
 7.12.2 Start-Up Resistor Design Example
7.12.3 Half-Wave Connection
7.12.4 Good Riddance, Start-Up Resistor!
7.12.5 High-Voltage Current Source
7.12.6 The Auxiliary Winding
7.12.7 Short-Circuit Protection
7.12.8 Observing the Feedback Pin
7.12.9 Sensing the Secondary-Side Current
7.12.10 Improving the Drive Capability
7.12.11 Overvoltage Protection
7.13 Compensating Over Power
7.13.1 Transferring Power with a Flyback Converter
7.13.2 The Propagation Delay Affects the Maximum Output Power Level
7.13.3 Why Limit Maximum Power?
7.13.4 How Do We Practically Limit the Maximum Power?
7.13.5 The Transition from CCM to DCM
7.13.6 Deriving Variables
7.13.7 Computing the Transmitted Power
7.13.8 Over Power Protection in CCM
7.13.9 Over Power Protection with a QR Flyback Converter
7.13.10 Reducing the Maximum Current at High Line
7.13.11 Calculating an OPP Resistance
7.14 Standby Power of Converters
7.14.1 What Is Standby Power?
7.14.2 The Origins of Losses
7.14.3 Skipping Unwanted Cycles
7.14.4 Skipping Cycles with a UC384X
7.14.5 Frequency Foldback
7.15 A 20 W, Single-Output Power Supply
7.16 A 90 W, Single-Output Power Supply
7.17 A 35 W, Multioutput Power Supply
7.18 Component Constraints for the Flyback Converter
What I Should Retain from This Chapter
References
Appendix 7A Reading the Waveforms to Extract the Transformer Parameters
Appendix 7B The Stress
7B.1 Voltage
7B.2 Current
Appendix 7C Transformer Design for the 90-W Adapter
7C.1 Core Selection
7C.2 Determining the Primary and Secondary Turns
7C.3 Choosing the Primary and Secondary Wire Sizes
 7C.4 Choosing the Material, Based on the Desired Inductance, or Gapping the Core If Necessary
7C.5 Designs Using Intusoft Magnetic Designer
Reference
Appendix 7D A Small-Signal Model of the Flyback Converter Operated in Quasi-Resonance
7D.1 A BCM Flyback Converter
7D.2 Application Example
7D.3 The Ac Analysis
7D.4 Numerical Application
Reference
Appendix 7E Switching Losses with a Nonlinearly Varying Parasitic Capacitor
Reference
Appendix 7F Testing Transformer Core Saturation Level
Reference
Chapter 8. Simulations and Practical Designs of Forward Converters

8.1 An Isolated Buck Converter

8.1.1 Need for a Complete Core Reset
8.2 Reset Solution 1, a Third Winding
8.2.1 Leakage Inductance and Overlap
8.3 Reset Solution 2, a Two-Switch Configuration
8.3.1 Two-Switch Forward and Half-Bridge Driver
8.4 Reset Solution 3, the Resonant Demagnetization

8.5 Reset Solution 4, the RCD Clamp

8.6 Reset Solution 5, the Active Clamp
8.6.1 Average Simulations of the Active Clamp Forward Converter
8.6.2 Ac Response of the Active Clamp Forward through Cycle-by-Cycle Simulation
8.7 Synchronous Rectification
8.8 Multioutput Forward Converters
8.8.1 Magnetic Amplifiers
8.8.2 Synchronous Postregulation
8.8.3 Coupled Inductors
8.9 Small-Signal Response of the Forward Converter
8.9.1 Voltage Mode
8.9.2 Current Mode
8.9.3 Multioutput Forward
8.10 A Single-Output 12-V, 250-W Forward Design Example
8.10.1 MOSFET Selection
8.10.2 Installing a Snubber
8.10.3 Diode Selection
8.10.4 Small-Signal Analysis
8.10.5 Transient Results
 8.10.6 Short-Circuit Protection
8.11 Component Constraints for the Forward Converter
What I Should Retain from This chapter
References
Appendix 8A Half-Bridge Drivers Using the Bootstrap Technique
Appendix 8B Impedance Reflections
Appendix 8C Transformer and Inductor Designs for the 250-W Adapter
8C.1 Transformer Variables
8C.2 Transformer Core Selection
8C.3 Determining the Primary and Secondary Turns
8C.4 Choosing the Primary and Secondary Wire Sizes
8C.5 Gapping the Core
8C.6 Designs Using Intusoft Magnetic Designer
8C.7 Inductor Design
8C.8 Core Selection
8C.9 Choosing the Wire Size and Checking the dc Resistive Loss
8C.10 Checking the Core Loss
8C.11 Estimating the Temperature Rise
Reference
Appendix 8D A Small-Signal Model for the Active Clamp Forward Converter Operated in Voltage Mode Control
8D.1 Revealing PWM Switches
8D.2 Large-Signal Simulations
8D.3 Small-Signal Modeling
8D.4 The Magnetizing Current Resonant Circuit
8D.5 Final Lap: Associating All the Blocks
8D.6 Testing a Prototype Response in the Bench
Reference
Appendix 8E Web Content
Conclusion
Index
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christophe P. Basso is currently an engineering director at ON Semiconductor in France, where he has developed numerous popular switching
power supply controllers, for instance, for the notebook adapter business. He is the author of several books on power electronics, including
McGraw-Hill’s Switch-Mode Power Supply SPICE Cookbook, and, recently, he released a title 100% dedicated to loop control, Designing
Control Loops for Linear and Switching Power Supplies. He regularly teaches professional seminars at IEEE-sponsored Applied Power
Electronics Conferences and often publishes articles in trade magazines such as PET and the online newsletter How2Power. Mr. Basso
graduated from the Montpellier University in 1985, and he received his M.S.E.E. in power electronics from the National Polytechnic Institute of
Toulouse in 2008. He holds 29 patents in the field of power electronics and he is an IEEE Senior Member.
PREFACE

I am glad to introduce the second edition of my 2008 book Switch-Mode Power Supplies: SPICE Simulations and Practical Designs. I would like
to thank all the readers who have contributed to make the first edition a success. I received numerous warm and supportive messages from all
around the world and it is extremely rewarding. Without you, this new book would not exist. Some of these readers have been kind enough to
report typos and errors they found in the first edition. I compiled them throughout the years and I used the list to clean equations and figures.
Revising a book is not an easy task, as some readers will object that there is too little renewed content to make it a new book while others
complain that this new edition represents a completely different document than the first one they bought! Needless to say, trying to please both
parties is a perilous exercise. Loyal to my original approach, I added topics in which I detailed the mathematical treatment so that you can follow
and learn from the book. In Chap. 1, it is the case for rms constraints concerning the basic switching cells. In most of the available books, authors
give formulas without founding equations and often limit their analysis to one conduction mode. Here, both conduction modes are explored and
detailed, with clear summary tables at the end. Numerous Mathcad® sheets are provided online at www.mhprofessional.com/Basso to let you
evaluate your own configurations. Small-signal-wise, Chap. 2 has been expanded with the PWM switch at work in a discontinuous conduction
mode boost converter and the derivation of a feedforward compensator gain. Chapter 3 now includes OTA-based compensators and offers a
transistor-level TL431 model. Chapter 4 includes several revisions on blocks such as the D-flip-flop and the leading edge blanking timer. Chapter
6 now includes a complete small-signal analysis of the borderline-operated boost PFC circuit operated in voltage or current mode. Chapter 7
covers in detail all over power phenomena in fixed-frequency discontinuous or continuous flyback converters, without forgetting quasi-resonance.
A small-signal model of a QR flyback converter is presented in one of the appendices. Finally, Chap. 8 includes a new small-signal model of the
active clamp forward converter operated in voltage-mode control.
I hope you will enjoy reading this second edition, in particular the newly added materials. Despite all my efforts, some typos or mistakes may have
escaped my attention and I would be grateful if you would send your corrections/remarks to [email protected]. As usual, I will keep a record of
these findings and compile them in my webpage http://cbasso.pagesperso-orange.fr/Spice.htm for the benefit of the reading community. I thank
you in advance and wish you the best of luck for your designs!
CHRISTOPHE P. BASSO
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My warmest thanks and love go first of all to my dear family: Anne, my wife, and my two beloved children, Lucile and Paul. Revising an entire 900-
page book cannot be done overnight and I am grateful I could spend endless hours correcting and writing new paragraphs without affecting family
life. Now that it is done, I will enjoy hiking, cycling, reading, snowshoeing, and spending leisure time with you all again!
The book revision could not have been envisaged without the help and involvement of many people. I wish to thank Joël Turchi, my friend and
colleague at work, who is always available to discuss technical subjects for hours and review my work. These discussions also took place with the
application team with whom I am lucky to work: Thierry Sutto, Stéphanie Cannenterre, Yann Vaquette, and Dr. José Capilla. They kindly reviewed
this second edition’s materials. Special thanks go to Alain Laprade of ON Semiconductor in East Greenwich who kindly reviewed several
chapters.
I wish to also express my gratitude to my beloved parents, Michele and Paul Basso, who bought me my first power supply when I was 14 and let
me develop my passion for electronic circuits, at the expense of numerous breaker trips. As we have returned to my youth, “merci” to teachers
such as René Vinci and Bernard Métral from the “Clos-Banet Lycée,” who instilled their passion and knowledge into the restless student that I
was. At the same time, I published my first article in Radio-Plans (1982), thanks to my friends Claude Ducros and Christian Duchemin, last
editors-in-chief of the now-defunct magazine. Finally, Claude Duchemin from the Montpellier University added the finishing touches and plugged
my fingers into the switching power supply world!
Both the first and second editions of this book incorporate comments and recommendations from prestigious people I have been honored to
work with. Their names follow and I wish to thank them warmly for the amount of time they spent reviewing the first edition’s materials and tracking
inaccuracies: Dr. Vatché Vorpérian (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), Dr. Richard Redl (Elfi), Ed Bloom (e/j BLOOM associates Inc.), Dr. Raymond
Ridley (Ridley Engineering), Dr. Ivo Barbi (Power Electronics Institute of the Federal University of Santa Catarina), Jeff Hall (ON Semiconductor),
Dhaval Dalal (Acptek), and not forgetting Monsieur Mullett (formerly with ON Semiconductor) for the two appendices kindly contributed on
magnetic designs! Also, Christian Zardini (retired from the ENSEIRB school), Dr. Franki Poon and Dr. S. C. Tan (PowerELab and the Hong Kong
Polytechnic University), Dr. Dylan Lu (Sydney University), Arnaud Obin (formerly with Lord Engineering), Dr. V. Ramanarayanan (Electrical
Engineering Department of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore), Dr. Jean-Paul Ferrieux (Laboratoire d’Electrotechnique de Grenoble),
Steve Sandler (AEi Systems), Dr. Didier Balocco (formerly with Saft Power Systems), and Pierre Aloisi (formerly with MOTOROLA).
I would also like to thank the people at Intusoft, Larry and Lise Meares and all their great support team (George, Farhad, Everett, Tim), who helped
me during the testing phase of the numerous book examples. I want to thank the editors of simulation software who have kindly contributed
simulation examples.
Finally, thank you to Mike McCabe, at McGraw-Hill, for giving me the opportunity to publish a new edition of my original book.
NOMENCLATURE

Ae the cross-section area of a magnetic material

BVDSS the MOSFET drain-source breakdown voltage

B the induction flux density in a magnetic medium

BCM borderline conduction mode (same as CrM) or boundary conduction mode

Br the remanent induction flux level when the magnetizing field is zero

Bsat the induction flux density at which μr drops to 1

CCM continuous conduction mode

CL closed loop

Clump the total capacitance seen on a particular point of the circuit

CrM critical conduction mode

CTR current transfer ratio for an optocoupler

D or d the converter duty ratio; also noted d1 in DCM analysis

D′ or d′ the duty ratio off time (d′ = 1′ d)

d2, d3 the duty ratio off times in DCM: 1 = d1 + d2 + d3

DT the dead time between switching events

D0 the converter static duty ratio during a bias-point analysis

ΔIL the peak-to-peak ripple current in the inductor

ESR equivalent series resistance

ESL equivalent series inductance

η the converter efficiency, eta

fc the crossover frequency, where |T(fc)| = 0 dB

Fsw the switching frequency

Fline the mains frequency

G(f) the compensator frequency response

Gfc the gain deficit (or excess) at the selected crossover frequency fc

φ the flux in a magnetic medium

φm the phase margin read at the crossover frequency fc

gm the transconductance of an operational transconductance amplifier (OTA)

H the magnetizing force

Hc the coercive field which brings the flux density back to zero

H(f) the converter power stage (the plant) frequency response

Ia, Ip, and Ic the average currents flowing in or out of the PWM switch terminals

IC the current inside a capacitor C

Id the diode current

ID the MOSFET drain current

Iin the input current of a given converter

Iin,rms or Iac the input rms current in a mains powered converter

IL the current in an inductor L

Imag the transformer magnetizing inductor current in a forward converter

Iout the output current of a given converter

Ip the primary current in a transformer-based converter

Ipeak the peak current in a given element

Isec the secondary current in a transformer-based converter

Ivalley the valley current in a given element

kD the derating factor for the MOSFET BVDSS

kd the derating factor for the diode VRRM

l, le, lm the mean magnetic path length

lg the gap length in a transformer

Lp the primary inductor of a transformer (usually in a flyback converter)

LHP left half-plane zero (LHPZ) or pole (LHPP) located in the left portion in an s-plane plot

Lleak the transformer total leakage inductance seen from the primary (all outputs shorted)

Lmag the magnetizing inductance of a transformer (usually in a forward converter)

Lsec the secondary-side inductor of a transformer

M the converter conversion ratio, Vout/Vin

Mc the slope compensation level in a current-mode converter (per Dr. Ridley’s definition)

Mr the external ramp coefficient in current-mode designs (as a percentage of the off slope)

μr the permeability of a material relative to that of free space

μi the initial permeability describes the slope of the magnetization curve at the origin

μ0 the permeability of the air

N the turns ratio of a transformer normalized to its primary winding. For instance, if Np = 10 and Ns = 3, then N
= 0.3

OL open loop; for instance a gain, a phase, or an output impedance

Pcond the conduction losses of an element implying a resistive path and a rms current squared

PF power factor

PFC power factor correction

Pout the converter output power

PIV the peak inverse voltage a diode has to sustain

PSW switching losses of an element implying an overlap area between a current and voltage
PSW

Q the quality coefficient of a filter or the quantity of electricity (coulombs)

Qr the charge the diode needs to evacuate before recovering its blocking capabilities

Qrr the total diode recovery charge

QG the amount of coulombs you need to bring to the MOSFET for its full enhancement

rCf the series resistor of the capacitor; also noted the ESR

rLf the series resistor of the inductor; also noted the ESL

RDS(on) the MOSFET drain-source resistance when turned on

rms root mean square

Rsense or Ri the sense resistor in a current-mode converter; sometimes called the burden resistor

RHP right half-plane zero (RHPZ) or pole (RHPP) located in the right portion in an s-plane plot

Sa or Se the external compensation ramp

Son or S1 the inductor slope during the on time

SEPIC single-ended primary inductance converter

SMPS switch-mode power supply

SPICE Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis

Soff or S2 the inductor slope during the off time

Sr the externally imposed blocking slope when blocking a diode

tc the rectifying diode conduction time

td the bulk capacitor discharge time

ton the time during which the power switch is turned on

toff the time during which the power switch is turned off

tprop the propagation delay of the logic blocks in a controller

trr the reverse recovery time of a diode

THD the total harmonic distortion

TVS transient voltage suppressor

T(f) the compensated loop gain

Tj the junction temperature

Tsw the switching period

Vac, Vcp the average voltages across the PWM switch terminals

Vbulk the bulk voltage

Vbulk,max or Vpeak the bulk voltage at the highest line (the ripple is neglected in this case)

VC the voltage across a capacitor C

Vce(sat) the saturation voltage of a bipolar transistor

Vclamp the clamping voltage level

VDS the MOSFET drain-source voltage

Vf the diode forward drop

VGS the MOSFET gate-source voltage

Vin the input voltage of the converter

Vin,rms or Vac the mains rms voltage

VL the voltage across an inductor L

Vleak the voltage across the leakage inductance

Vmin or Vbulk,min the bulk valley voltage, low line only

VOS the voltage overshoot on the RCD clamp

Vout the output voltage

Vpeak the peak amplitude of sawtooth ramp in a voltage-mode PWM

Vp the peak undershoot voltage in response to a load step

Vr the secondary-side voltage reflected on the primary side in a transformer-based converter

Vsense the voltage developed across the sense resistor in a current-mode converter

Vripple the peak-to-peak ripple voltage

VRRM the diode maximum repetitive reverse voltage

ζ the Greek letter zeta, representative of the damping factor [often mixed up with ζ (xi)]
CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION TO POWER CONVERSION

User friendliness is a key factor for the commercial success of any simulation program. The growing complexity of integrated circuits and
equipment makes this aspect increasingly important. Despite numerous publications devoted to the Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit
Emphasis (SPICE), it still scares the novice when its name is mentioned.
Developed in the mid-1970s at the University of California, Berkeley, the SPICE program’s primary aim was to fulfill the needs of the electronics
industry—mainly integrated circuit makers. However, with the support and funds from private editors, the SPICE program has evolved over a
number of years into many practical and affordable packages, with emphasis on providing both low-priced and friendly access to beginners.
SPICE can significantly help you speed up the design phase of the equipment you are currently working on, even if SPICE is not able to generate
an electronic schematic by itself. SPICE is inherently efficient because if you start working with an unfamiliar concept, it will quickly enable you to
grasp the full meaning of any particular architecture by unveiling its peculiar waveforms. You can thus use the simulator to gain insight into the
circuit you have to build and also ensure all parameters are taken into account before the breadboard phase.
This book is intended for power supply designers, experts in their fields, as well as for beginners who would like to understand the secrets of
switch-mode power conversion. Manipulating virtual components on a computer screen, without the hazards of high voltage, offers an interesting
and safe way to learn the technique. Furthermore, the “experience” gained in simulation, and it is also true for experts simulating a novel concept,
will let you feel more comfortable when breadboarding on the bench.

1.1 “DO YOU REALLY NEED TO SIMULATE?”

How many times have you heard this question when asking for a simulation package or a new computer? The following statements do not
represent an exhaustive list of pros about computer simulation, but they can certainly be considered a “help list” available during the negotiations:
1. Here is an argument: Simulation can avoid waste of time and money. With its inherent iterative power, SPICE covers numerous application
cases in which you could easily detect any design flaw or product weakness. The stability of a closed-loop SMPS represents a typical application
when some key feedback elements are moving (i.e., the variable load that affects a pole) or start to degrade with temperature and aging (as the
electrolytic equivalent series resistor). Moreover, design ideas can also be tested or assessed in a snapshot through a computer and, if they are
worth trying, further refined in the lab.
2. You can start to work on a project by downloading components models and becoming familiar with the key elements, before going to the bench
or waiting for the samples to be delivered. Once these samples arrive, you will have already gained insight by prototyping with the simulator and
the practical debug phase on the bench will clearly take benefit from your first computer-based experiments.
3. Simulate test measurements whenever you do not own the adequate equipment: Bandwidth measurements represent a good example. If you
cannot afford a network analyzer, then a proven small-signal model can help you start to refine your feedback loop. When run on the final
prototype, stability assessments will be faster and more efficient.
4. Power libraries are safe: They let you experiment “what if” when amperes and kilovolts are flowing in the circuit without blowing up in the event
of a wrong connection! Also, they let you see how your design reacts to a short-circuit of the optocoupler or the opening of a resistor. SPICE can
begin to give you the answer.

1.2 WHAT YOU WILL FIND IN THE FOLLOWING PAGES

This book thoroughly details the advantages of SPICE to let you understand, simulate, test, and finally improve the switch-mode power supply
(SMPS) you want to design. By providing you with specific simulation recipes, this work intends to facilitate as much as possible your SMPS
design. Unlike other books, the author strives to balance the theoretical content, necessary to understand and question simulation results, with
practical design examples. This is developed throughout the eight chapters of the book.
Chapter 1 explains switch-mode power supply techniques and types of converters, and it introduces a few important results to help you better
understand averaging techniques. This second edition includes the comprehensive derivation of root mean square (rms) current constraints of the
basic switching cells, buck, boost, and buck-boost operated in continuous or discontinuous conduction modes. As usual, I have detailed
derivation steps so that you can follow and learn the technique in case you encounter a different switching cell. A new appendix has been added.
Chapter 2 explains how average models were derived, and different types are described. A good comprehension of this chapter is fundamental:
It will help you question certain weird SPICE data resulting from a bad model implementation. If you do not understand the way the model has
been derived, you will obviously face some difficulties in resolving these issues. In Chap. 2, you will also learn how to wire an average model and
run basic simulations. This second edition adds the description of the feedforward modulator. I added more details to the small-signal PWM
switch. In particular, I show how keeping the same voltage-mode average model to which you add a “duty ratio factory” turns the model into a
simplified version of current mode. An appendix has been added focusing on the DCM (discontinuous conduction mode) voltage-mode boost
small-signal transfer function. Closing the loop is obviously an important aspect of converter design that is often overlooked. This is not the case
here, and Chap. 3 will guide you through control loop design, again using practical examples with a TL431 and not op amps only, as often seen in
the literature. OTA (operational transconductance amplifiers) compensators are now part of this chapter, covering types 1 and 2. A complete
transistor-level model of the TL431 has been added to its dedicated appendix. Because not every integrated circuit always comes with a SPICE
model, Chap. 4 describes how the generic switched models are derived. This chapter will interest those who want to strengthen their knowledge
of SPICE model writing. A more robust D-flip-flop is described and several new circuits have been added. Chapter 5 describes practical designs
of the three basic nonisolated topologies, including the front-end filter. Before analyzing off-line converters, Chap. 6 shows how to design the
rectifying section and explains the various power factor correction techniques. Small-signal response of the popular borderline-operated power
factor correction (PFC) has been added in a dedicated appendix. Chapter 7 is entirely dedicated to the flyback converter, with specific design
examples at the end. A new section on over power has been added and it covers all operating modes, including QR converters. An appendix
gives the small-signal response of the QR converter. Nonlinear capacitor switching losses are explored in a dedicated appendix. Finally, the
forward converter appears in Chap. 8, again associated with a design example. The coupled-inductors section has been updated and a
complete small-signal model of the active-clamp converter operated in voltage-mode is presented with experimental results.
Version syntax is a significant issue with SPICE. Most SPICE editors deal with a proprietary syntax, sometimes SPICE3 conformant, that makes
translation from one platform to another a difficult and painful exercise. To allow the use of different simulators, the standard models presented
throughout the pages are compatible with Intusoft IsSpice (San Pedro, Calif.) and CADENCE’s PSpice (Irvine, Calif.).
To help you quickly copy and paste examples, simulation files have been made available for download from a McGraw-Hill website. Please check
App. 8E for details. Some selected simulation examples are offered in IsSpice and PSpice syntax, and you can easily load them on your
computer if you have one of these software programs. For students or newcomers to the SPICE world, some demonstration versions will let you
open files and simulate some of them (those demos are size-limited) to give you a taste of what the full version can do. The McGraw-Hill
download page contains PowerPoint® and Mathcad® files to let you key in your own design parameters and check small-signal response or rms
constraints of the basic switching cells.
For professional power supply designers, another library file is separately distributed. This file contains the design examples presented in the
book plus numerous other industrial applications using real controllers. Please visit the author’s website for distribution details
(http://cbasso.pagesperso-orange.fr/Spice.htm).

1.3 WHAT YOU WILL NOT FIND IN THIS BOOK

This book does not describe the way SPICE operates, nor does it solve typical electric circuits. It assumes that the reader is already familiar with
the basics of SPICE simulations. Numerous books and papers are available on the subject as the References section details [1, 2]. Whenever
possible, the extended bibliography will guide your choice if you wish to strengthen your knowledge in a particular domain, such as some
topologies that you are unfamiliar with. If some theoretical results are sometimes delivered just “as is,” we strongly encourage the reader to dig
further into the appropriate literature and acquire the theory that precedes the result.
The book focuses only on a system approach. No SPICE description of typical discrete power elements such as diodes, MOSFETs, etc., is
proposed.

Finally, here is the important statement, probably the most interesting one! SPICE does not replace the breadboard phase, nor does it shield you
from writing equations or understanding electronics. It looks like a simple sentence, but the author has often been confronted by designers
showing boards in the trash and claiming, “But SPICE said it would work!!” Yes, all ideas work on paper until they face the soldering iron
condemnation.… Use SPICE as a design companion, a circuit insider that can reveal waveforms difficult to observe. But always question the
delivered data: Is this the real behavior, have I been misled somewhere, does a simple calculation more or less confirm what I see?
After this brief introduction, it is time to plunge into the intricacy of SMPS design and simulation with SPICE.

1.4 CONVERTING POWER WITH RESISTORS

In the electronics world, different types of circuitries must cohabit: logic devices, analog circuits, microprocessors, and so on. Unfortunately for the
designer, these circuits do not cope with a single, fixed, power supply rail: A microprocessor or a digital signal processor (DSP) will need a
stable 3.3-V source or less, a front-end acquisition board will require ±15 V and perhaps some logic glue around a standard 5 V. For the final
board being supplied from a single power point, for example, the mains outlet or a battery, how is one to adapt and distribute all these different
voltages to the appropriate portions? The solution consists of inserting a so-called converter to adapt the voltage distribution to the circuit needs.

1.4.1 Associating Resistors

Figure 1.1 portrays the simplest option a designer can think of: resistive dividers. If our DSP consumes 66 mA over 3.3 V, then it can be replaced
by a 50-Ω resistor, the same as for our 50 mA, 5-V logic circuit via the 100-Ω resistor. From a 12-V source, we can then calculate the dropping
resistors:
Another random document with
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more than thirty years ago as a sprouting bed for naturalistic drama
and the social thesis-play. To-day it still cultivates the best in Realism
and in the social drama, but it looks condescendingly on the thesis-
play, and it gives the most completely artistic and successful
example to be seen in Germany of an expressionist play and an
expressionist production.
The Volksbühne has always had a double policy—that of buying
out performances of good plays and retailing the seats to its
members for much less than the box office prices, and that of
producing plays itself. It began with a few Sunday performances of
both kinds, and steadily grew in membership to the point where it
buys all the Sunday matinees at a number of theaters, has two
playhouses of its own, the Volksbühne and the Neues Volkstheater,
and is organizing an opera house, the Volksoper. One hundred and
eighty thousand men and women of the lower and lower-middle
classes subscribed in 1922 for eight productions, either at the
society’s theaters or at the playhouses with which it deals.
The Volksbühne itself is rather an extraordinary theater. Its striking
front, with the words Die Kunst dem Volke upon its pediment, rises
across a street that cuts through the workingmen’s quarter of Berlin,
and, after a slight bend, crosses the Spree and becomes Unter den
Linden. From above its little triangle of park, the Volksbühne stares
ironically and, doubtless, a little proudly down the long street that
passes the hideous art galleries of the Prussian government, the
palaces once occupied by the Hohenzollerns, the State Opera,
where royalty turned its back upon Richard Strauss, and runs on to
the Brandenburger Tor of Imperial memories. The theater has the
grimly noble air of the best of German architecture. In its auditorium
Oskar Kaufmann has turned from the austerity of gray stone to the
richness of red mahogany. The working class audiences of the
Volksbühne find themselves seated, therefore, in the handsomest
and doubtless the most costly auditorium of Berlin when they come
to see the play which might almost be the story of their own defeat in
the communist risings of 1919.
Masse-Mensch itself is a play, half dream and half reality, in which
is pictured the conflict of Masse, the masses, against Mensch, the
individual, of violent revolution against passive strike. Its drama
pleads piteously for the sacredness of human life and the equal guilt
of the State or the revolution that takes it. Because it was written by
Ernst Toller, who, as he wrote it, lay in a Munich jail serving a twenty-
year sentence for his part as Minister of Justice in the red rebellion
which followed the assassination of Kurt Eisner by the reactionaries,
Masse-Mensch is pretty generally taboo in German theaters. In the
first six months after its première at the Volksbühne (29th
September, 1921) it was played about seventy times, a very great
number of performances in repertory. But upon its production in
Nuremberg riots interrupted the first performance, and it was never
repeated.
 Richard III: the final moment. White virtue triumphs.

Richmond: Now civil wounds are stopp’d, Peace lives again:

That she may long live here, God say Amen!

To the significance of the play itself and the proletarian

organization which flings it in the face of a Germany where
monarchists and republicans, socialists and communists, State and
cabals, murder with almost equal recklessness, must be added a
truly remarkable type and quality of production. It bears a certain
relation to the work of Jessner at the State Schauspielhaus, where,
by the way, Fehling is now to be employed. It is absolutely free of
Realism and representation—as all expressionist production must
be. It reduces setting to less than symbol, to what is hardly more
than a convenient platform for the actor. It uses light arbitrarily.
Masse-Mensch is a piece in seven scenes. The first, third, fifth and
seventh are actual; the others are dream-pictures. In the first scene
Toller’s stage directions call for “The rear room of a workingman’s
meeting hall. On the white-washed walls, portraits of leaders of the
people and photographs of union delegates. In the center a heavy
table, at which a woman and two workmen are seated.” The stage
directions for the second scene, or first dream-picture, read:
“Indicated: The hall of a stock exchange. At the desk, a clerk; about
him, bankers and brokers.”
The playwright felt keenly the possibilities of the modern,
subjective methods of productions, or he would not have used the
word, “indicated.” He did not feel them clearly enough, however, to
risk more than their application to the dream-pictures. But, taking
“Indicated” as a key-word, Fehling has boldly ventured to apply
abstract and expressionist methods to the whole of this thoroughly
expressionist play. In the first scene, for instance, as you see it at the
Volksbühne, there is no hall, there is no desk, there are no portraits.
There is nothing but a deep box of high black curtains, and in the
center a very low, broad platform. Upon this platform, spotted out
with three shafts of light, are the two men and the woman in the taut
attitudes of wrestlers as they clasp hands, the woman in the middle.
For the dream scene, the stage is again in black curtains, but those
at the rear are occasionally opened to show a clerk on an impossibly
high stool, writing on an impossibly high desk, almost in silhouette
against the yellow-lighted dome. A few steps lead down into the
darkness of the front stage. Fehling and his stage designer, Hans
Strohbach, pursue the same general method in the succeeding
scenes. The “real” episodes are set in black curtains and with steps
of one sort or another; they are lit by obvious beams of light, and
they are given no more color than shows in the woman’s severe blue
dress and one glimpse of the yellow dome. The dream-pictures are
more elaborately staged, though they seem quite bare by the
standard of our productions. The curious part is that the scenes of
reality are more expressionistic, considering their purpose, than the
dream-pictures. Reality is made of nothing but abstract plastic
shapes, harsh, and harshly lit. Dreamland is sometimes painted and
shaped in the slightly decorative spirit of Expressionism, and it is lit
with beauty and atmosphere.

Masse-Mensch: dream-picture. A courtyard. Towering dark walls lean

inward; a green night sky; guards with lanterns seated on the floor at
either side. A man stands in the center playing a concertina.

The effective arrangement of Strohbach’s scenes, and the

powerful use which Fehling makes of them stamp the physical side
of this production with distinction. Spiritually it is even more
distinguished because of the rightness of vision with which Fehling
interprets the play, and the brilliance with which he handles, not only
the individual acting, but a chorus of united voices, which speaks
through many scenes with an extraordinary clarity and emotion.
 From the beginning of the first scene the actors strike the note of
intensity and conviction, both as players and as characters, which
they are to carry through the whole performance. Mary Dietrich, once
of Reinhardt’s company, plays superbly the woman protagonist of the
strike and of humanity. From the moment when her husband comes
to her in the name of love to ask her to give up the leadership of the
strike, which will begin next day, Dietrich drives with such furious
precision at the meaning of this woman that she stands out
immediately as a sort of Christ-figure. In the beginning she must give
up all; she must leave home and love, to follow her call. In the end
she must go to the scaffold rejecting all means of escape. It is one of
the distinctions of this play, as well as of Dietrich’s playing, that this
reference to Christ is so beautiful and so sure, yet so reticent.
The second scene, the dream-picture of a stock exchange, is a
foreboding and dread satire. The bankers and brokers bid up human
souls in the war that is under way, and make plans for an
international corporation, which, posing as a founder of homes for
convalescent soldiers, will open brothels for the troops. The woman
appears in her dream, and makes a vain appeal to the humanity of
these men. The bankers hear only the announcement of a mine
accident and plan a benefit dance, beginning with a fox-trot by the
brokers around the stage.
The third scene is the labor meeting at which a decision is to be
taken on action to stop the making of munitions and end the war.
Here again, Fehling throws the author’s realistic stage directions
overboard (much, be it said, to the author’s pleasure). Instead of a
hall, there is again blackness, emptiness. Out of the emptiness
speaks a marvelous choral voice, the voice of the masses,
measured, vibrant, intense:

Wir ewig eingekeilt

In Schluchten steiler Häuser.
Wir preisgegeben
Der Mechanik höhnischer Systeme.
Wir antlitzlos in Nacht der Tränen.
Wir ewig losgelöst von Müttern,
 Aus Tiefen der Fabriken rufen wir:
Wann werden Liebe wir leben?
Wann werden Werk wir wirken?
Wann wird Erlösung uns?

Masse-Mensch: the revolutionists’ meeting. On a broad flight of steps

rising steeply from the footlights, men and women are grouped in an
irregular lozenge, arbitrarily lit by sharp beams of light from the top
and sides of the proscenium arch. A Fehling production designed by
Strohbach.

Nothing like this voice, coming out of a darkness in which faces

vaguely begin to hover, has been imagined, much less attempted, in
our theater. The lights rise—or it would be more accurate to say,
shoot down—upon the men and women workers standing in an
irregular lozenge shape upon steep steps, which spread to the
curtains at each side. Out of this crowd, in chorus and singly, come
pleas for action, and visions of suffering which sweep the audience
with emotion. The woman cries for a strike against war and against
capital. Behind her rises The Nameless One, the bastard of War, to
cry for armed revolt. His passion sweeps the masses, and the
woman submits.
The fourth scene, another dream-picture, envisages her fears for
the course of the revolution, her intuition that it will only breed a new
violence, the violence of the proletariat. Below great, crooked,
towering walls, guards hang over green lanterns. They sing ribald
songs of their miseries. The Nameless One enters, and, standing in
the middle, plays wildly on a concertina, while the guards and the
condemned dance the dance of death about him. The sky lights up
on a sudden in crimson, then pulses in and out; colors flood down
over the moving figures in waves that throb with the music. Among
the condemned is the husband of the woman. She tries to save him,
as she would save all men from violence. Her pleas are useless. She
stands with him before the firing squad as the curtain falls.
The fifth scene, the tremendous scene of the play and the
production, is the rally at the workers’ headquarters in the face of
defeat. The stage is again boxed in black. There are steps like the
corner of a pyramid rising up to the right of the audience. Upon these
steps gather the working people. You see a host, affrighted and
cowering, in the twenty-four men and women who stagger upon the
steps singing The Marseillaise. As they sway, locked together hand
in hand, like men on a sinking ship, and the old song mounts up
against the distant rattle of machine guns, the scene brings the cold
sweat of desperate excitement to the audience that fills the
Volksbühne, and to comfortable, purse-proud Americans as much as
to men who have fought in the streets of Berlin. Suddenly there is a
louder rattle of arms. The noise sweeps through the air. It drives into
the souls of the huddling men and women. They collapse, go down,
fall in a tangled heap. The curtains at the left loop up suddenly.
There in the gap against the yellow sky stand the soldiers. They
arrest the woman, the woman whom the rebels were about to
condemn for her opposition to their slaughter.
 Masse-Mensch: the rallying. A pyramid of steps slanting to the right of
the stage. At its apex, a group of tense revolutionists sing The
Marseillaise, the woman-heroine opposite them in the center.
Suddenly machine-guns attack the meeting.

The sixth scene is a dream-picture of the woman in prison. There

is a void, a misty, swimming emptiness. Upon a platform is the
woman’s cell, a scarlet cage in which she can only kneel. About her
stand guards, bankers, the ghosts of dead enemies. They accuse
her. She answers. At last, out of the void rise the shapes of the
masses, the imprisoned masses who have been betrayed by
violence and by the woman who deserted them and cast her lot with
violence. They move in a great circle of towering shadows that seem
to hang in the emptiness of the sky, as they pass across the dome at
the back of the stage. The guilt of the masses, the guilt of the
individual, the guilt of the woman—they have filled the air with
recrimination. The figures of the imprisoned masses stop suddenly in
their round. They raise their arms. They cry: “We accuse!”
There is only the final scene left. It is in her cell. Again the black
curtains; some narrow steps. The husband comes to bring her
freedom. The Nameless One also, with a plan of escape through
murdering the guards. She rejects both. She rejects the priest,
accusing men of primeval sin. She goes to her death. And as she
goes, two women prisoners sneak out into the light—to divide the
clothes of this new Christ.
Schuldig! Guilty! Guilty! The word echoes through the play, echoes
in the auditorium of the Volksbühne. All are guilty. All are sick with
guilt. And none more than these sufferers in the slums of Berlin who
must go to the theater to see in black curtains the picture of their
guilt. The world goes through capitalism, debasing itself, driving
terror, greed, cruelty into the place of love and understanding. It
comes out in revolution, a corruption of the thing it cures. The
Germans have been through capitalism with a vengeance, through
materialism, through war, and through a revolution that blasted half
the people and did not satisfy the rest. Here is the misery of
capitalism, the misery of abortive revolution, the misery of defeat and
black hunger. Berlin is in purgatory. And Berlin goes to Masse-
Mensch. Before this play sit hundreds of quite ordinary men, who
have only to hear some word shouted at them with the passion of
this play, and they will leave the slow and loved routine of homes,
and lie again behind sandbags on Unter den Linden. All this is a
strange, terrible, and sweet thing to feel as you sit looking at the
purgatory of those black curtains.
Toller and Fehling have made possible the realization of this
intense situation between play and audience; Toller by writing
straight at the heart of his public. His dialogue makes no pretense to
the accidental rhythms of life. It speaks out plainly and simply and
beautifully the passion of each character, the passions of the world.
Fehling has driven Toller’s speeches just as directly at the public. He
has made no pretense at actuality. He has put his actors forward as
actors on an abstract stage; and you think of them only as living,
intimate presences.
 Masse-Mensch: the machine-guns. The black curtains at the back are
thrown open. Soldiers and officers are seen enveloped in a thin haze
of smoke. The group shrinks back and falls together.

Comparison between Fehling and Jessner is inevitable. They are

both working upon the newest problem of production, the problem of
escaping from Realism to reality and to the theater. They both throw
overboard every shred of actuality that stands in the way of inner
emotional truth. Technically, Fehling is as insistent as Jessner on the
abstract, the formal production as the means of giving the actor and
his emotion vividly and completely to the audience. Fehling realizes
as keenly as Jessner does how different playing-levels can help him
in deploying and emphasizing his actors. He does not, like Jessner,
use the same levels throughout a play. He creates new plastics as
he needs them. His production is formal in principle, but he does not
rely upon a stage of certain permanent forms. His lighting is abstract,
like Jessner’s, paying no attention at all to actuality; but it is not so
free or so wilful in changes. The lights make a definite pattern in
each scene and stick to it throughout. The only sharp exception is
the scene of the dance of the condemned. Fehling does not try to
make his lighting a running gloss to the words of the play.
Fehling may be much over-praised by the emotion of Masse-
Mensch; perhaps there is a something in the passion of the play
which lights up these players and these playgoers of the
Volksbühne, and brings forth a unique and unwilled emotion. But
there seem to be certain qualities in this production which stamp the
director as a man of imagination and power. Certainly Fehling has a
large and healthful simpleness. He isn’t finicking over rudimentary
explanations with lights and shadows and primary colors. He isn’t
missing the quality of the play in an endeavor to create a thing of a
single startling or novel tone. He is certainly winning from his actors
a spiritual coöperation finer than any that we saw in Germany. He is
unmistakably one of the leaders along new paths—a sure and
challenging force.
Masse-Mensch: A woman dressed in blue in a dream-prison of twisted
scarlet bars, surrounded by motionless dark figures. Behind, gigantic
spectral shadow-shapes march across a faintly luminous void.
 CHAPTER XIII
“THE THEATER OF THE FIVE THOUSAND”

O VER some fifteen years a growing number of minds have been

more or less actively seeking a way towards a new type of
theater. They have been abusing the picture-frame stage, stamping
on the footlights, pulling out the front of the apron, pushing the actors
into the loges, down the orchestra pit, onto the prompter’s box, out
upon runways or up the aisles. They have even gone clear out of the
playhouse and into circuses, open air theaters, and public parks. All
to set up a new and mutual relationship between the actor and the
audience.
You might almost say to set up any mutual relationship at all; for
the players of the peep-hole theater of Realism, the picture-frame
theater, the fourth wall theater, can hardly be said to have anything
resembling a relationship to the spectator. The thing peeped at can’t
be aware of the peeper. A picture does not know that it has an
audience. Walls may have ears, but the fourth wall has no eyes. It is
the essence of Realism and of realistic acting that they have their
justification in the thing they resemble, not in the people who may or
may not be able to recognize the resemblance. A perfect realistic
performance is a thing so close to life that it cannot permit itself to be
aware of even its own existence. Its perfection is so much more
related to the thing it imitates than to the audience which looks at it,
that it would be no less perfect if there were no one at all to look. The
fourth wall is a fourth wall. It might just as well be as real as the other
three. Alexander Bakshy wrote of Stanislavsky’s company: “It would
have made scarcely an atom of difference to the adequacy and
completeness of the Art Theater’s performance if the audience had
been entirely removed.”
Such performances can be very interesting in their way,
extraordinarily interesting, in fact, when such players as
Stanislavsky’s bring spiritual distinction to their Realism. But there is
another sort of thing that can be interesting, too. Some think it can
be more interesting; at any rate they want to find out what it was that
kept the theater contented for the twenty-five centuries before it
knew Realism. They want to draw out the actor and the spectator;
the actor out of the picture frame and the spectator—if the actor is
good enough—out of his seat. They want to make the actor an actor
once more. And they think that a new sort of theater—or a very old
sort—might have something to do with it.
Directors have thought about it, and playwrights, dancing
teachers, architects, scenic artists, actors, and critics. Max Reinhardt
put a runway over the audience in Sumurûn more than a dozen
years ago and staged Sophocles in a circus. Percy MacKaye
developed the community masque as a new form of outdoor
theatrical performance through The Masque of St. Louis and
Caliban, and brought it indoors with The Evergreen Tree and The
Will of Song. Jaques-Dalcroze, deviser of the eurythmic system of
dance-education, created in Hellerau-bei-Dresden, before the war, a
hall holding the stage and the spectators within translucent walls lit
by ten thousand lights, and there, with the aid of Adolphe Appia, he
gave Paul Claudel’s drama L’Annonce faite à Marie. Frank Lloyd
Wright, designing a theater for Aline Barnsdall of Los Angeles,
created a model showing an adjustable proscenium, which was
hardly a proscenium, a domed stage which curved into the lines of
the auditorium, and a permanent architectural setting consisting of a
wall twelve feet high running across the stage. Herman Rosse, the
scenic artist, took to sketching theaters with all manner of odd
forestages and portals. Norman-Bel Geddes threw off in 1914 a plan
for a theater with stage and audience housed under a single dome,
and in 1921 designed a magnificent project for the production of
Dante’s The Divine Comedy in Madison Square Garden in a
permanent setting of ringed steps, towering plinths, and light.
Gémier, the French actor, introduced the Reinhardt circus-theater to
Paris. Jacques Copeau left his reviewing of plays to create in the
Vieux-Colombier a theater without a proscenium, and with a
forestage and a permanent setting, in order to give his troupe of
actors a fresh and truly theatrical relation to their audience.
 The first attempts to escape from the realistic theater were
Gargantuan. It seems as if there were something so essentially small
about our theater that a huge thing was the natural alternative. Max
Reinhardt and Percy MacKaye, the two men who began the break
with the realistic theater, and who carried their conceptions furthest,
plunged immediately to the huge, the magnificent. They could have
found inspiration in Gordon Craig, as practically every innovator in
our playhouse has done. For Gordon Craig, too, saw a gigantic
vision of the break between this peepshow of ours and the next
theater:
“I see a great building to seat many thousands of people. At one
end rises a platform of heroic size on which figures of a heroic mold
shall move. The scene shall be such as the world shows us, not as
our own particular little street shows us. The movements of these
scenes shall be noble and great: all shall be illuminated by a light
such as the spheres give us, not such as the footlights give us, but
such as we dream of.”
MacKaye had a family tradition to urge him towards large
experiments. His father, Steele MacKaye, irritated no doubt by the
limitations of the nineteenth century theater as we are irritated by the
limitations of the theater of the twentieth century, conceived and all
but launched a grandiose and extraordinary scheme for a playhouse
at the Chicago World’s Fair. The Spectatorium, which was to seat ten
thousand people and give a spectacle of music and drama,
movement and light, dancing and action, on land and on water, was
burned, however, before it could be completed.
The dominating idea in the younger MacKaye was to create a
dramatic form of and for the people. It was to celebrate the works of
humanity; The Masque of St. Louis commemorated the founding of
the western city, and Caliban the tercentenary of Shakespeare’s
death. The MacKaye masque was to be acted and danced by the
community with the assistance of a few trained players, and it was to
be seen by as many as possible; in St. Louis 7,000 took part and
200,000 looked on. The experience of these community masques
led MacKaye to want the active participation of the citizens as
audience as well as of the citizens as actors, and in The Evergreen
Tree he arranged a Christmas festival, to be given either out of doors
or within, in which the spectators sang with the chorus and the
actors, who passed through the midst of them. Another desire of
MacKaye’s was the enlarging of the characters of his masques to
gigantic size. He did this literally in The Masque of St. Louis with the
huge figure which stood for Cahokia. In The Will of Song, given its
first production indoors, he began to work upon the idea of the
“group being,” a single dramatic entity visualized through a mass of
players.
Whether or not Reinhardt began his first great circus-production,
Sophocles’ Œdipus Rex, with an esthetic philosophy, he had one
before he was finished with Orestes, Hauptmann’s Festspiel, and
Everyman, the productions which followed. This was visible in his
works as well as in the outgivings of his Blätter des Deutschen
Theaters.
Like MacKaye, Reinhardt found a tremendous fascination in the
relationship of this sort of production to man in the mass. In the
“theater of the five thousand,” as he called it, audiences are no
longer audiences. They are the people. “Their emotions are simple
and primitive, but great and powerful, as becomes the eternal human
race.” This follows from the nature of the theater and the relation of
the actors to the audience. Monumentality is the key note of such
great spaces. It is only the strongest and deepest feelings—the
eternal elements—that can move these great gatherings. The small
and the petty disappear.
Yet the emotion is direct and poignant, according to Reinhardt,
because of a spiritual intimacy established by the new relation of
actors and audience. In the Circus Schumann in Berlin Reinhardt
revived the Greek orchestra. At one end of the building was the front
of a temple. The actors came out in great mobs before the temple,
upon an acting floor surrounded on three sides by banks of
spectators. In the theory and the practice of Reinhardt there should
be no curtain to conceal the setting. When the spectator enters he
finds himself in the midst of great spaces, confronted by the whole
scene, and himself a part of it. When he is seated and the play
begins he finds that “the chorus rises and moves in the midst of the
audience; the characters meet each other amid the spectators; from
all sides the hearer is being impressed, so that gradually he
becomes part of the whole, and is rapidly absorbed in the action, a
member of the chorus, so to speak.” This is a point that Reinhardt
has always stressed in his big productions. This desire to make the
spectators feel themselves participants is the same desire that
MacKaye has carried to the point of actually making them so.
Reinhardt stressed the importance of the actors being made one
with the audience through appearing in their midst. This maintained
the intimacy which, he felt, was the most valuable contribution of the
realistic movement in the theater—an intimacy produced in the main
by the small auditoriums required if conversational acting were to be
audible. Gigantic conceptions and tremendous emotional emphasis
could thus be brought home to the spectator.
Technically the circus-theater made interesting demands. From the
régisseur and the scene designer it required the utmost simplicity.
Only the biggest and severest forms could be used. Light was the
main source of decoration; it emphasized the important and hid the
unessential. Acting, too, underwent the same test. The player had to
develop a simple and tremendous power. He had to dominate by
intensity and by dignity, by the vital and the great. There had to be
music in him, as there had to be music in the action itself.
The war prevented Reinhardt from continuing his experiments in
mass-production, and bringing them to fruition in a theater built
especially for the purpose. With the coming of peace he was able to
remodel and re-open the old Circus Schumann as the Grosses
Schauspielhaus. But in less than two years Reinhardt had left it in
discouragement, his great dream shattered. By the summer of 1922
it could definitely be stamped an artistic failure—crowded to the
doors every night.
 An impression of the Grosses Schauspielhaus in Berlin. In the center
rises the great dome, dimly lit. At the left of the picture the looming
shadow of the hood above the forestage. A shaft of light from the
dome strikes across the space to the figure of Judith, standing lonely
and brave. Beyond, row after row of faces just visible in the darkness.

It is not easy to trace the cause of failure, but it seems to lie in the
curious fact that here Reinhardt was both careless and too careful.
Physically the theater was wrong, if the theory was right, and its
physical mistakes can be traced to Reinhardt. He was too careful in
planning it and not courageous enough. Because he feared for its
future as a financial undertaking, he seems to have compromised it
in form, in order that it could be used as an ordinary, though huge
playhouse if it failed as a new kind of theater. He put in the Greek
orchestra surrounded on three sides by spectators. He made the
floor flexible in its levels, and led it up by adjustable platforms to a
stage at one side of the house. This much was right enough. But
then he made the thing a compromise between the Greek theater, a
circus, and the modern playhouse, by slapping a proscenium arch
into the side wall and installing behind it a huge stage with all the
mechanical folderols of the day—great dome, cloud-machine,
revolving stage. It was beyond human nature to resist the temptation
of playing with the whole gigantic toy. Neither Reinhardt nor the
directors who succeeded him could be content, as they should have
been, to lower the curtain across the proscenium, to plaster up the
fourth wall. Perhaps there were not enough great dramas like
Œdipus to draw for months the gigantic audiences needed to support
the venture; but this only meant that such a theater must be
maintained for festival performances, not that it must be filled with
bastard productions requiring a picture stage and largely inaudible
across the spaces of the Grosses Schauspielhaus.
Reinhardt was as careless in his selection of an architect as he
was careful in compromise. His original conception of the place was
excellent. He wanted it primitive and grand. He wanted it to soar.
And he thought of early Gothic. Between the pillars that had to be
there to support the roof of the old circus, he wanted a dark blue
background, a background of emptiness. The dome over the middle
was to vanish into a deep presence, lit sometimes by dim stars.
Some one got to Reinhardt, and persuaded him that he must be
“modern;” he must assume a leadership in architecture; he must give
a chance to the greatest of the new architects, Hans Poelzig.
Reinhardt consented. And Poelzig produced a very strange affair.
Some of the mistakes of the Grosses Schauspielhaus may be laid
to the old building. The banks of seats are rather close against the
roof, while the middle of the house is bridged by a gigantic dome.
These conditions might have been minimized by giving the low
portion lines that seemed to mount, and perhaps by closing in a
large part of the dome or darkening it. Instead Poelzig has made the
dome the only lovely and aspiring part of the architecture. It is a
dream of soaring circles. If the building could only be turned upside
down, and the actors could play in this flashing bowl, while the
audience looked down upon them—!