International Journal of Advanced Research in
Computer Science and Software Engineering
Research Paper
Available online at:
www.ijarcsse.com
A Comparison & Performance of Simulation Tools
MATLAB/SIMULINK, PSIM & PSPICE for Power
Electronics Circuits
Santosh S. Raghuwanshi
Ankita Singh
Yamini mokhariwale
EX Dept.,RGPV,Bhopal(M.P.)India EX Dept.,RGPV,Bhopal(M.P.)India EX Dept.,RGPV,Bhopal(M.P.)India
er_sant@rediffmail.com
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Abstract--The software packages available for simulation of power electronic circuits are MATLAB, PS PICE and PS IM. In this paper the simulation of rectifier and inverter circuits were performed in the MATLAB, PS PICE and PS IM environment and the comparison of results were made. Rectifier and inverter are the power electronic circuits which were highly used in all power supply units. The paper explains the theoretical approach of these circuits and then the simulation results are given in order to show the effectiven ess of the system in the simulation arena.
Keywords—MATLAB, PSIM, PASICE, DC-AC Converter, AC-DC Converter
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I. INTRODUCTION
Po wer Electronics is interdisciplinary and is at the confluence of three fundamental technical areas - power, e lectronics and control, and is used in a wide variety of industries from computers, chemica l plants to rolling mills. The importance of power electronics has grown over the years due to several factors. Computer simu lation can greatly aid in the analysis , design and education of Power Electronics. A co mputer simu lation (or "sim") is an attempt to model a real-life or hypothetical situation on a computer so that it can be studied to see how the system works. By changing variables, predict ions may be made about the behavior of the system. In our work towards this we have ensured to bring out the different responses of current and voltage in the power electronic circuits. However, simu lation of power electronics systems is made challenging by the follo wing factors:
Extre me non-linearity presented by switches
Time constants within the system may diffe r by several orders of magnitude and
A lack of models
There fore, it is important that the objective of the co mputer analysis be evaluated carefully and an appropriate simu lation package be chosen.
In view of the above considerations, a SPICE based simu lation package, MATLAB and PSIM have been used for simu lating the power electronic circuits like rectifiers, inverters, choppers
and AC voltage controllers. They have had the detailed device models and have been able to represent the controller portion of the converter system by its functional features in as simplified a manner as possible. In th is paper the simulation of rectifie r and inverter circuits were taken into consideration.
A rectifier is an electrica l device that converts alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC), a process known as rectification. Rectifiers have many uses including as components of power supplies and as detectors of radio signals. Rectifie rs may be made of solid state diodes, vacuum tube diodes, mercury a rc valves, and other components.
An inverter is an electrical or e lectro-mechanica l device that converts direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC); the resulting AC can be at any required voltage and frequency with the use of appropriate transformers, switching, and control circuits. Static Inverters have no moving parts and are used in a wide range of applications, from sma ll switching power supplies in computers, to large e lectric utility high-voltage direct current applications that transport bulk power. Inverters are common ly used to supply AC power fro m DC sources such as solar panels or batteries. The electrical inverter is a high-power electronic oscillator. It is so named because early mechanical A C to DC converters was made to work in reverse, and thus was "inverted", to convert DC to AC. The inverter performs the opposite function of a rectifie r. The co mparison of the software tools are exp lained in the following s ections.
MATLAB is numeric co mputation software for engineering and scientific calcu lations. MATLAB is being used for circu it theory, filte r design, random processes, control systems and communicat ion theory. MATLAB matrix functions are shown to be versatile in doing analysis of data obtained from electronics e xperiments. The graphical features of MATLAB are especially useful for display of frequency response of amp lifie rs and illustrating the principles and concepts of semiconductor physics. The interactive programming and versatile graphics of MATLAB is especially effect ive in e xp loring some of the characteristics of devices and electronic circuits.
PSIM is simulation software specifically designed for power electronics and motor drives. With fast simu lation and friendly user interface, PSIM provides a powerful simu lation environment for power electronics, analog and digital control, magnetics, and motor drive system studies. Powersim develops and markets leading simu lation and design tools for research and product development in power supplies, motor drives and power conversion and control systems.
SPICE is an acronym for Simu lation Progra m with Integrated Circuit Emphasis and was inspired by the need to accurately model devices used in integrated circuit design. It has now become the standard computer program for e lectrica l and electronic simulat ion. The majority of co mme rcia l packages are based on SPICE2 version G6 fro m the Un iversity of Ca lifornia at Berkeley a lthough development has now progress ed to SPICE3. The increased utilization of PCs has led to the production of PSPICE, a widely available PC version distributed by the MicroSim Corporation whilst HSPICE fro m Meta-Software has been popular for workstations and is now also available for the PC. One of the reasons for the popularity of Pspice is the availability and the capability to share its evaluation version freely at no cost. This evaluation version is very powerful for powe r e lectronics simu lations.
II. DC-AC CONVERS ION
In this section the simu lation of rectifie r is e xpla ined with three diffe rent simulation packages and the corresponding waveforms are p lotted.
A. PSIM Based Simulation Method
Fig. 1 shows SCR bas ed full bridge inverter c ircuit diagra m in PSIM. In this circu it Vs is 100v, load R-L, resistance is 1kohm and inductance is 1m henry. The SCR switching frequency is 1k hertz. The output wave form shown in fig.2 in this wave sinusoidal output voltage is 100v and output current 0.1a mp.
Fig. 1 SCR based Inverter circuit in PSIM
Fig.2 Output Voltage wave form
B. MATLAB Based Simulation Method
Fig. 3 shows MOSFET based full bridge inverter circuit diagra m in MATLAB. In this circuit Vs is 100v, load R-L, resistance is 1koh m and inductance is 1m henry. The SCR switching frequency is 1k hertz. The output wave form shown in fig.4 in this wave sinusoidal output voltage is 100v and output current 0.1a mp.
Fig. 3 MOSFET based full bridge inverter in MATLAB
Fig.4 Output voltage wave form
PSPICE based simulation for full bridge inverter and the corresponding output waveforms are shown in Fig. 5-6 respectively.
Fig.5 Inverter circuit in PSPICE
Fig. 6 Output voltage waveform III. AC-DC CONVERS ION
In this section the simu lation of rectifie r is e xpla ined with three diffe rent simulation packages and the corresponding waveforms are p lotted.
A. PSIM based Simulation Method
Fig.7 shows the power circuit of the fully controlled single-phase PWM converter in PSIM, which uses four transistors with anti parallel diodes in SCR bridge block to produce a controlled dc voltage Vo. Using a bipolar PWM switching strategy, this converter may have two conduction states:
transistors T1 and T4 in the ON state and T2 and T3 in the OFF state; or
transistors T2 and T3 in the ON state and T1 and T4 in the OFF state.
In this topology, the output voltage Vo must be higher than the peak value of the ac source voltage vs in order to ensure proper control of the input current.The input voltage value Vs= 200v, switching frequency is 1KHz. After simulat ion the output voltage and current wave form with resistive load is shown in fig. 8. In this wave harmonics are presence.
Fig.7 Single-phase full bridge converter circuit in PSIM
Fig.8 output voltage and current waveforms
B. MATLAB Based Simulation Method
In MATLAB the simulat ion has been carried out for rectifier in Simu link bloc k set. Here the full wave rectifie r is used which conducts for both positive and negative half cycles respectively. Fig.9 shows the circuit diagra m for full wave rectifier and the corresponding input and output waveforms are shown in Fig.10.The specificat ions of the circuit are : Input AC Vo ltage=48V, Load resistor=100Ω and employing 4 diodes for rectification. The output thus obtained is a waveform without using a filter c ircu it. By e mp loying a filter c ircu it a pulsating DC waveform can be obtained. The circuit is uncontrolled full bridge rectifie r. For a controlled rectifier thyristor switches can be used.
Fig.9 Full wave rectifier circuit in MATLAB
Fig. 10Input and Output voltage waveforms
C. PSPICE Based Simulation Method
PSPICE based simulation for full bridge rectifier is shown in Fig.11. The corresponding input and output voltage waveforms are shown in Figs. 12 and 13 respectively. The circu it specifications are input AC Vo ltage=20V, frequency=50Hz and load resistor=100Ω.
Fig.11 Full wave rectifier circuit in PSPICE
Fig.12Input voltage waveform
Fig.13Output voltage waveform
IV. CONCLUS IONS
A detailed analysis of simulation using the s oftware tools like MATLAB, PSIM and PSPICE are given. Here the e xa mp les taken are rectifier and inverter c ircu its. The waveform wh ich was obtained has to be analysed in each and every half cycle interval of time . The software packages provide the way for getting the sequences happening in each and every cycle. In addition the various parameters which can be measured are voltages and currents across the inputs, outputs and also across the switches. A comparison between the software‟s discussed is listed below.
MATLAB finds applications in all areas fro m control systems to robotics. Any controller can be designed and tested in the simu lation arena for power e lectronics and power system based circuits. This also provides the provision of graphical user interfaces and m file progra mming to design the various intelligent controllers like neural networks, fuzzy logic control, genetic algorith ms etc.,
Advantages of using PSPICE are :
PSpice allows mult iple plots to be viewed simu ltaneously, such as voltage, power, etc. Also, specific points, such as a voltage at a certain time, can be selected and ma rked on the output plot in PSpice,
PSpice contains lib raries full of specific co mponents with manufacturer specifications. These components are included so the user may obtain realistic simu lation results,
Very simple to represent any electrical circuit, in particular powe r-e lectronic c ircu its and
a wide library of commerc ial electric co mponents are available.
Usage of PSIM increases due to:
With PSIM's interactive simulat ion capability, we can change parameter values and view voltages/currents in the middle of a simu lation. It is like having a v irtual test bench running on our computer,
we can design and simulate digita l power supplies using PSIM's Digital Control Module. The digital control can be imple mented in e ither b lock diagra m or custom C code,
PSIM has a built-in C co mp ile r which a llows us to enter our own C code into PSIM without compiling. This makes it very easy and fle xib le to imple ment our own function or control methods,
We can use the Therma l Module to calculate semiconductor device losses (conduction losses and switching losses) based on the device information fro m manufacturers datasheet.
Today‟s computer technology enables a new approach to this work which has not been considered feasible before. Simu lation programs will run on inexpensive machines and be widely available. Circu its will be specified in a simp le graphical format which is self documenting. Models will be available to meet today‟s needs and yet be suffic iently versatile to be adapted to new devices as they appear. By means of a suitable choice of simu lator ele ments, even the inexpert user will be able to customize his package to incorporate future device developments. In comparing the above mentioned packages for a wide variety of applications all the software‟s provide its own unique property in obtaining and analyzing the results. Hence its upto the user to decide the software as either MATLAB or PSPICE or PSIM depending upon their area of work and applications. The other software packages such as spice and octave/scilab can also be compared with the e xisting packages.
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