Shendi University

Faculty of Engineering & Architecture

Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
EEE 307

Power Electronics
Lecture 9

Computer Applications
[email protected]
Lecture Outline

❑ Introduction
❑ Simulation Softwares
❑ What is Multisim?
❑ Multisim Simulation
❑ Design Example

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 Introduction
❑Electronics have an important place in daily life.
❑So important, in fact, that the modern world cannot be conceived of without electronics.
❑From reading and writing e-mails, using our cell phone to call and sent text messages, writing
a letter in a word processor, managing data in a spreadsheet, controlling traffic in a busy
downtown, tracking objects in a manufacturing plant, buying and selling stocks, etc.,
electronic circuits are used to perform these tasks.
❑Nowadays, modern electronic circuits are composed by millions of transistors.
❑ For example, an Intel microprocessor needs more than 500 million transistors to be able to
handle data at a speed greater than 2.5 GHz and an iPhone with an A6 processor can have
almost the same number of transistors.
❑To test these devices before the actual manufacturing needs extensive simulation of the
circuit to ensure proper performance once the chip is in the computer or phone
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 Simulation Softwares
MATLAB (Software for Numerical Computing)
❑ MATLAB (MATrix LABarotary) is the most popular electrical engineering software among
Electrical Engineering students.
❑ It was launched in 1983 by Mathworks Inc. and was one of the first commercial packages for
linear algebra.
❑ It has evolved over time and has become the most comprehensive software for Numerical
Computing, Dynamic System Simulations, Algebraic Solutions, Symbolic Mathematics etc.
❑ It contains add-on packages (called Toolboxes) for various functionalities.
❑ Toolboxes provide built-in functions to perform numerical computations including but not
limited to Ordinary & Partial Differential Equations, Optimization, Linear System
Implementation, Linear Algebra, Control System Design, System Identification, Curve Fitting.
❑ The programing language used in MATLAB (The software package) is also called Matlab.
❑ Matlab is a high-level programming language, it contains a good number of built-in functions to
efficiently deal with matrices, numerical computations, symbolic mathematics etc.

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 Simulation Softwares
MATLAB- SIMULINK
❑Simulink is the GUI based companion software for MATLAB.
❑It is powered by MATLAB programming language.
❑ Many electrical engineers find Simulink much easier to use than MATLAB.
❑When you use MATLAB® and Simulink® together, you combine textual and
graphical programming to design your system in a simulation environment.
❑Directly using the thousands of algorithms that are already in MATLAB.
❑Use MATLAB to create input data sets to drive simulation.
❑Run thousands of simulations in parallel. Then analyze and visualize the data
in MATLAB.
❑Though Simulink is general-purpose software for implementing graphical
simulation, it has a specialized toolbox for simulating Power Systems.
❑It can be used to simulate, analyze renewable energy resources, transmission
lines, electrical transients, standby switching of power supply.

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 Simulation Softwares
Pspice (Electrical Schematic Software)
❑ OrCAD EE PSpice is a SPICE circuit simulator application for simulation and verification of
analog and mixed-signal circuits.
❑ PSpice is an acronym for Personal Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis.
❑ OrCAD Capture and PSpice Designer together provide a complete circuit simulation and
verification solution with schematic entry, native analog, mixed-signal, and analysis
engines.
❑ PSpice was a modified version of the academically developed SPICE, and was
commercialized by MicroSim in 1984.
❑ MicroSim was purchased by OrCAD a decade later in 1998.
❑ The PSpice Advanced Analysis simulation capabilities cover various analyses- Sensitivity,
Monte Carlo, Smoke (Stress), Optimizer, and Parametric Plotter providing in-depth
understanding of circuit performance beyond basic validation.
❑ The OrCAD PSpice Simulink- PSpice Integration(SLPS) provides co-simulation and helps
verify system-level behavior.

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 What is MultiSim
❑There are several circuit simulators on the market.
❑The most popular simulator is SPICE (Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit
Emphasis) designed at the University of California at Berkeley.
❑This simulator is so powerful that commercial simulators are based on it.
❑Of the many simulators available, Multisim has emerged as the best for circuit
simulation.
❑Multisim is a SPICE-based simulator, produced by National Instruments Inc. in Austin,
TX, with a schematic-capture interface that allows easy circuit topology input and
specification of simulation data
❑NI Multisim is a powerful tool used to simulate and prototype power electronics circuit
designs.
❑Multisim has large database of configurable power component models along with
existing SPICE models from various semiconductor manufacturers.
❑The powerful Multisim simulation enables the evaluation of different power circuits of
different ratings at an early design stage.
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What is MultiSim
❑You can use models for IGBT and MOSFET switches, electro-mechanical components,
different active and passive components, and switching controllers to accurately evaluate
power electronics systems.
❑SPICE is the dominant technology for simulating power circuits.
❑However, there are two aspects that make it more challenging to simulate power circuits
than low-power analog circuitry in a SPICE simulator; the quality of the component
models, and the accuracy of the transient time simulation of the SPICE engine.
❑In Multisim, we account for both of these aspects to guarantee a best-in-class simulation
and analysis of power electronics circuits.

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Multisim Simulation
❑ Multisim features a comprehensive suite of simulation tools and an expandable
selection of custom analyses for examining and optimizing circuit performance.

❑ The most critical analysis in the evaluation of power circuit performance is the
transient analysis. It is used to visualize the critical voltage transitions at different
nodes of the circuit from one state to another and illustrate how the circuit
converges to its steady state.

❑ In Multisim, designers could vary different transient simulation parameters to

guarantee a higher quality of the simulation (over the expense of simulation time).
Dealing with these parameters requires some basic understanding of SPICE
simulation. You can find these under Simulate/Interactive Simulation Settings on
the Analysis options tab. Use custom settings and click the Customize box.

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Multisim Simulation
Multisim workspace

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Multisim Simulation
Placing Components
❑ Unlike PSPICE, Multisim automatically starts a new project for you, and you can start
drawing your circuit by placing the different components required.

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 Multisim Simulation
Changing Component Parameters
❑To change the values or names of the component, you can either right click on the
component and select properties, or double click on the component, and a screen will pop
up allowing you to change the properties and values of the component.

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Multisim Simulation
Wiring
❑When wiring, place cursor at the corners of component and you should see a black
dot appearing, click the mouse once and drag your wire to the edge of another
component where a red dot should appear, click again to connect.

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Multisim Simulation
Saving

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 Design Example
Half Wave Rectifier in Multisim
❑ First place down all your components. "ctrl + w" opens up the component window.
form there you can place down your components.
1. AC_POWER and Ground can be found under Sources>Power_Sources.
2. Diodes can be found under Diodes, for this example were using a Virtual diode.
3. Resistors can be found under Basic>Resistors. for this example, were using a 1K
ohm resistor.
❑ Use "ctrl+shift+W" to wire the components together.
❑ Adjust the values on the Voltage source by double clicking it and navigating to
the value tab, from here we can edit the values of the source. we have used 10V
RMS and 5Hz for this example.

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 Design Example
Half Wave Rectifier in Multisim

❑Now we can start taking our measurements, navigate

to your Oscilloscope on the left hand side of the
screen.

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 Design Example
Half Wave Rectifier in Multisim

❑Click and drag your Oscilloscope to a wanted

possession on work space.
❑Connect the two ports from the A Terminal to the
circuit, positive on top and negative on bottom of
the resistor.

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 Design Example
Half Wave Rectifier in Multisim
❑Run the simulation by pressing the green Triangle, in the simulate toolbar, or by
pressing the F5 key on your keyboard.
❑Make sure you run the simulation in interactive mode. this can be altered under
Simulation>Analysis and Simulation.
❑To access your Oscilloscope readings toy can double click on the oscilloscope icon
on your work space.
❑ This will bring up your standard waveform chart.
❑You can increase the scale of the X-axis (time) under the Timebase section of
the oscilloscope, for this example 50 ms/DIV should be sufficient.
❑This will give you a wave similar to the one displayed in the next slide.

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 Design Example
Half Wave Rectifier in Multisim

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 Thank You

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