About
Power Electronics: A Modern Educational Reference Bridging Theory and Application
Power Electronics is considered one of the vital and rapidly evolving fields in modern times due to its essential role in energy applications, conversion, and management. In light of this technological momentum, there is a growing need for specialized educational resources that cater to different academic levels while simplifying complex concepts. This book comes as a timely response to fill a significant educational gap in electrical engineering curricula, offering a comprehensive and tailored content specifically designed for students in the final two years of undergraduate studies, as well as first-year graduate students.
Objective and Academic Orientation of the Book
The primary goal pursued by the authors is to enable students to analyze and design power conversion circuits commonly used in industrial applications. The content has been meticulously crafted to present the fundamental concepts forming the core of this specialization, with a clear orientation toward advanced undergraduate students and professionals seeking to update their knowledge in this ever-evolving field.
Teaching power electronics to undergraduate students is known to be challenging due to the field’s breadth and the wide range of its applications. Hence, topics were carefully selected to suit a three-credit-hour course, avoiding delving into more advanced areas like electric machine drives or large-scale power grid applications, which are often too extensive for the limited time available in standard university lectures.
Required Background and Early Chapters
This book assumes that students have prior knowledge of basic circuit analysis and an introductory understanding of electronic circuits, which is natural within the academic progression of electrical engineering programs.
Chapter three provides a comprehensive review of diode switching circuits and fundamental analysis techniques that serve as a foundation for the subsequent chapters.
Content Organization and Pedagogical Structure
The book features a new and widely recommended approach for presenting the material, endorsed by many educators in this discipline. The chapters are logically structured to ensure gradual skill development. The early chapters introduce:
The basic principles of switching electronic devices.
Techniques for analyzing switching circuits.
Types of power converters.
Energy conversion methods.
After establishing these theoretical foundations, Chapter 4 explores high-frequency non-isolated DC-DC converters, followed by isolated converters in Chapter 5, and resonant soft-switching converters in Chapter 6.
Traditional Topics in the Latter Half of the Book
The second half focuses on traditional yet essential subjects, including:
Diode-based rectifiers – Chapter 7
Thyristor-based rectifiers (SCR converters) – Chapter 8
DC-AC inverters – Chapter 9
Balancing Comprehensiveness with Realism
This book achieves an ideal balance between comprehensive knowledge and practical educational design. The authors have focused on covering sufficient content for a single academic semester, while also offering professors the flexibility to select and reorder topics based on the course objectives and students' skills.
This book stands as an ideal reference for teaching power electronics in a structured and thoughtful manner. It masterfully blends theoretical foundations with practical applications, and clear explanations with precise analysis, making it an effective tool for preparing engineering students for advanced roles in energy and industrial electronics.
It also serves as a successful model for how to simplify complex technical knowledge to suit both the learners’ capabilities and the demands of the job market.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 Review of Switching Concepts and Power
3 Switching Circuits and Power Computations
4 Non-Isolated Switch-Mode DC-DC Converters
5 Isolated Switch-Mode DC-DC Converters
6 Soft-Switching DC-DC Converters
7 Uncontrolled Diode Rectifier Circuits
8 Phase-Controlled Converters
9 DC-AC Inverters