MatPECS - A MATLAB-based Power Electronic circuit simulation package with GUI for effective classroom teaching

Power electronics devices and circuits have revolutionized the concept of power control for power conversion and electrical motor drives. Power Electronics course is essential for electrical engineers and is included in the undergraduate- level syllabus. With various circuit configurations like single-phase/three-phase circuits with R/RL/RLC/RLE loads and associated voltage and current waveforms to be dealt with, it is a tough subject to teach as well as to understand. This has led to a general disinterest in this field among the students. If all the circuit configurations and associated waveforms can be visualized for different operating conditions, the concepts become clearer and interesting. The objective of this paper is to introduce a MATLAB-based simulation package intended to make the classroom teaching of power electronics more effective and easy. MATLAB has proved itself to be a powerful tool for simulation. It is a software package available in almost all the technical institutions. This paper presents a simple menu-driven program that students can use to explore the behavior of power electronic circuits. The paper also explains how the graphical user interface (GUI) feature of MATLAB can be effectively used for making interactive software packages. © 2005 TEMPUS Publications.