FOUR/87 caibhsen Audio Amateur THE JOURNAL FOR AUDIOPHILE CRAFTSINDUCTANCE FOR YOUR SUPPLY DESIGN BY FERNANDO GARCIA VIESCA fa the dawn of the elecuonics age, the rectified sine wave was usually Filtered with the help of inductors. With the old technology, it was state- ofthear to design equipment that ‘way. But as espaciter technology ad- vanced, and with the trends toward rminiatinization and light weight, hie ductance has completaly vanished fom (6OHz power supplies. Switching power supplies, with their high operating fre- quencies, (20 to 200kHz} are a case apart. Nowdays, the odds aze 500 to 1 ‘that any equipment users with prob- Jems in their power supply will ty 0 solve them with more ond more ‘capacitance, ‘Are the trends correct? Yes, but the areas of highcurrent power supply design can benefit from some induc- tance. There is a device in your bi-t system that clearly fits inthis high cus- rent category: the power amplifier. (Capacitance vs. Inductance ‘Let's take a look atthe different advar- tages and disadvantages of capacitor in- ‘pul fering, With capacitance you get: + Small size and weight in the fil ter's components, + Enormous amounts of filtering c2- pacity for your money, «Higher average DC volts than AC RMS volts + Low supply impedance. + High peak to average rectifier and transformer currents, «Very high in-rush currents, With a conventional inductor input filter, such 4s the Fig. 1 topology, you get the opposite features. As we may 22, The Audio Amateur 4/37 [FIGURE 1: Conventional inductor fiter.a wasteful bleder resistor is employed, other wise « very large inductor would result FILTER INDUCTOR see ibeage [ie eer FIGURE 2: Sugrested inductor filter topology. By moving the inductor out of the DC current path, we enjoy greater jteedom in choosing an appropriate inductor valueWith 2 workedou example, you'll cence this size restrition more cleaaly. ‘Suppose an amplifier whose peak cur- rentdraw is 75A and the idling current is ODA at 27V DC. To calculate Rit 4s safe to assume that: well designed power tansform- crdocsnot allow more than 25% dsop fn is output voltage from idle ¢o fall Joe + And that the transforner's series FIGURE 3: Ripple reduction graph: Star- sng with a 48 percent ripple ofe fll wave rectifier, itmay be decreased with etther ‘apicitancs or inductance. Rlisthe equiv alent full-load resistance. see, with the exception of the two last features, capacitor input filtering holds the aces in its band. ‘Bat could we benefit from just a lite tle inductance and therefore have the best af hoth worlds? Yes, but an obscure pitfall awaits whenever we use an in- ductor in a DC current path. You ean- not let it “run dry,” és when the in- ductor current drops to zero. For that reason there is a mbiniamuma csiticalin- ‘duczance that is inversely proportional to the idling (minimum) output cur- rent, A low idling carrent in your amplifier would mean a very large im- practical inductor. In. the past_we customarily included a bleeder resistor that never alowed a eartent drain £0 drop lower than the equivalent of 10 percent of maxinmam output current. In «BOA suppl this would mean two amperes of continaoasly wasted power: Now you can see why inductors have heen totally dropped from solid stare supplies. “The minim critical inductance re- quired to avoid "sunning it dry” is siven by the formula: Le = (Re + Raa) + Sw hero: ww = 2xf = 377 (at CO) Ry = series resistance, including trens- former, diode and wiring resistances Rane * Vine + Ile resistance is the main component in Ry. ‘Therefore we may approximate the series resistance: By = Van X Nm = flaw ~ Ta) We may assume tbat: Vee = VDC + 1418 Ry-203 x 005 + (7.5-012|-0.1380 And our equivalent resistance at mininimum curent draw would be: Rew = 27 + 0.12 = 2250 Working with the above formula we would get: Le =[225+.135) + {8 > 377)=0.199H or 199mH CClesly such an inductor would comsist of an enormous chunk of copper and iron. We could use, instead, « wasteful bleeder resistor. We must provide enough blesler current to complete 0.75A (10 percent of 7.54). 4 = 075 — 0.12 = 0.634 ‘And the wasted power would be: P= 0.63 x 26 = 17W ‘And recaloulating the critical indue- tance we would still nee 38mH. No wonder inductors went the way of the dinosanr. ‘The saturation phenomena resulting fom operating inductors with DC cur- rent may be eccumvented if we operate them from AC current. The sir gap re- ‘quired in a DC operated inductor, a source of magnetic interference, is de- leted in AC operation. became aware of this in a rather awkward situation. I once hid trouble ‘with apower aupply whose outpat volt age was lower than calculated. Upon IGURE 4: Load regulation: Output volr- ‘30 vanation sth changing Toad cuneit ‘re ploted in this graph, Calculitine your RAR (max) and R/R, iin) will allowr you to acutely pret tie fad et hooking an oscilloscope, I found the culprit a transformer with excessive Jeakage inductance. I observed that will the iower output wolage was ex tainly « drawheck, the output voltage txhibied a Tower ripple nd the peale diode current was lowered. Isuddealy realized that an extra indactor placed 45 shown in Pig. 2 would hivethe same overall effect ‘We place the inductor before the ‘wide feoifier, and therelore the core 8 AC powered and reset every half ove. Core saturation is no longer a prob Jem and we're free to include as much or as litte inductance as the circuit requires. A Capacitor Input Example 1 will start with the conventional de~ sign of the same 27V, 7.54 power sap- ply assuming thet only capacitance will De used, and chat inductance will be in- cluded later in emall increments, co I could carefully tailor the value to min- {mize drawbacks and maximize bene- fits. All the following equations are de- rived from the work of O.H. Schate, subsequently reproduced in many books Its shown in Fig. 3, thet for low rip ple, (less than 3 percent) the following equation should be met: WX Rina XC > 15 Solving for this inequality gives a ‘capacitance value greater than 132614 ‘This results in a practical value of ‘The Ao Amateur 4/8723