Power Electronics Circuits and Simulation

Learning LTSpice in order to simulate and analyse several power electronics circuits

Jamie Ashton

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Description

I have never used LTSpice before, and thought it was about time to learn it. The initial idea of this project was to build a DIY Arduino based buck converter. I may still do this in time, but whilst designing the circuit I used LTSpice for the first time and realised that it was a tool I'd like to get better at. Additionally it was hard to source the parts for the converter in small supply where I live. So for now i'll just be creating and analysing simulations for several different power electronic circuits.

Project Logs

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DC-DC Step-Down Converter
Jamie Ashton • 04/27/2025 at 14:07 • 0 comments

The Circuit

I started by creating a simple buck converter in LTSpice. This circuit steps-down a 12V input by adjusting the PWM signal supplied to the IRLZ44N MOSFET power transistor which acts as the switching transistor. I chose a 100 uF capacitor and 100 uH inductor to start with, and will investigate the effects of changing these component values in time. The free-wheel diode chosen was the MBR745 Schottky diode, as its ratings are well within safe ranges for this circuit. Additionally it has fast recovery and a low forward voltage drop.

The Simulation

The Schematic
The switching of the transistor is controlled by a PWM output signal from a microcontroller, wired at J3.

The PCB