This is the second time that I worked as the teaching assistant for ECE 431/531. And this time, Prof. Peterchec and I decided to do someting different.
Duke has been through a drought of power electronics for a pretty long period after having thrived in the last century. Please don’t get me wrong, the class ECE 431/531, Power Electronic Circuits for Energy Conversion, has been here for a long time; and Prof. Peterchev gave tremendous lectures. Yet, compared with other ECE subjects, mostly coding, where it’s easy to get your hands on, this subject lacks some tangible interaction with students, until us.
After nearly twenty years, we finally brought the hand-on power electronics back to here at Duke. This semester (Spring 24), with the guidance of Prof. Peterchev, I designed a lab session from scratch. The goal is to guide students to build a closed loop boost circuit with a PWM IC UC2823. Most students finished and left the lab happily with their own boost circuit (pictures, I can’t give the hardware away, even though I really wanted to).
It was an exciting experience; and I wish to share this joy with more people. Please find the slides here.