Electronics Book Updates Technology

May 1, 2001 12:00 PM
Sam Davis, Editor

It's hard to find a good power electronics book. However, the second edition of Fundamentals of Power Electronics is definitely worth your time. Published in December 2000, the text incorporates several revisions of the original 791-page book published in 1997. The author of the first edition is Dr. Robert W. Erickson of the University of Colorado at Boulder. Dr. Dragan Maksimovic, fellow University of Colorado at Boulder faculty member, joins Dr. Erickson in writing the second edition, covering 912 pages.

Erickson notes in his preface to the first edition that the wide variety of areas is one aspect that makes the power electronics field so interesting and appealing to newcomers. He points out the importance of reviewing basic material from prerequisite areas, because not all students have the necessary solid prerequisite background in so many areas in this field. Erickson said the book “treats fundamental concepts and design problems in sufficient depth that students can actually build converters.”

Subjects covered in the first edition included the fundamentals of converter analysis, converter modeling, power semiconductor switching, and switching losses, and steady-state analysis of the discontinuous conduction mode. Other subjects include converter topologies, converter control systems, current programmed control, power inductors and transformers, power factor correction, resonant inverters and converters, and zero voltage switching.

The first edition of the book served as a textbook for introductory power electronics defining fundamentals of power electronics, presenting them rigorously, and in sufficient depth. The second edition retains the philosophy of the original book — making modifications and adding new topics.

A look at the second edition shows the growth of technology between 1997 and 2000. Features of the second book include new material on converter simulation using average switched models. There's also a major revision of material on current mode control, including the tables of transfer functions of basic converters. The authors revised the material on averaged switch modeling, and added new material on input filter design and Middlebrook's extra element theorem. They include improved explanations of the proximity effect and MMF diagrams, and a new section on design of multiple-winding magnetics using the Kg method — including new examples. The second addition features more information on soft switching, including active clamp snubbers, the ZVT full-bridge converters, and ARCP, and major revisions are presented on low-harmonic rectifiers, and ac modeling of the discontinuous conduction mode.

The second edition reflects Erickson and Maksimovic's combined, more than 17 years, experience of teaching power electronics at the University of Colorado. These courses were heavily influenced by previous experience derived as graduate students at California Institute of Technology under the tutelage of Dr. R. D. Middlebrook and Dr. Slobodan Cuk.

Kluwer Academic Publishers produced the second edition. The ISBN number is 0-7923-7270-0. You can find additional details of the second edition at http://ece-www.colorado.edu/~pwrelect/book/SecEd.html.

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