#86🚀 "Actionable" Articles describing Power Converters

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Today's topic concerns the usefulness of the IEEE articles or some App Notes describing Power converters.

Figure 1. Schematic of a 65W Flyback from the app note: https://www.infineon.com/dgdl/Infineon-Demonstration_board_DEMO_XDPS2201_65W1-ApplicationNotes-v02_00-EN.pdf?fileId=5546d46278d64ffd0178fe756a1b6f6b

"Actionable" Articles or App Notes

I have been writing articles for conferences during my Ph.D. and later in collaboration with some universities. Also, I have read a lot of App Notes from Semiconductor companies. In most cases, looking for technical support in a specific problem.

The Power Electronics industry is organized in a way where:

1. There aren´t big consultant companies

2. Academia is doing most of the consultant work

3. Conferences serve as a good opportunity of showing capabilities

4. There are a lot of independent consultants designing Power Supplies

5. Semiconductor companies share complete designs of Power Supplies with their chips. They shared PCB layouts, BOM, and simulation results.

6. Semiconductor companies are also doing consultant work for the big final customers.

I assume the semiconductor App Notes are good enough to try to replicate it.

However, I don´t think IEEE articles can be replicated easily. Of course, the main goal of this article is to disseminate research from professors and students, but since the industry is organized with the Academia generating most of the knowledge,

IEEE articles are the main source of knowledge for Power Electronics.

But can we trust all the articles? Of course not. This is not a critique of the articles because I also participate in writing the articles; I want to create a new type of article.

Actionable Article

One of the most common problems of articles is the differences between the results provided in the article and the results you can get if you try to replicate the simulation or the experiment. This is usually due to the small tunings the engineers need to do to make work a design.

The goal of the Actionable Article is to bring the reader simulations, schematics and results which could help him replicate the author's work.

In the future of Power Electronics, the main rule of this article will be:

Every user can replicate the work here, exactly as the author did

In my humble opinion, this is only possible if the Article includes active files, circuit simulation, complete schematics, Lab measurements with a complete description of equipment and conditions replicable in the simulation, and access to the BOM (real access).

Figure 2. The circuit used in my article: Three-Phase Buck type Rectifier Topology integrated with Current Fed Full-Bridge - JM Molina, APEC 2015

I have reviewed my own articles, and I find a lot of interesting questions and details answered in the article. However, there are a lot of details that are difficult to replicate. The goal of this article was to show a concept, then, it wouldn´t be an Actionable Article. Nevertheless, I would like to have an Actionable Thesis where I could replicate the complete circuit, having access to the last version of the hardware. Don´t you?

I will stop here to listen to your thoughts. Lately, I’m receiving 4-5 responses from the NL with interesting feedback or discussions. Looking forward to your thoughts on the Actionable Article.

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