A modular approach in teaching thyristor rectifiers with equation-oriented softwares

This article is devoted to some issues of teaching power electronics in university courses. In the modern education system the students are expected to be no longer subject of passive learning, but that, within a certain extent, they collaborate in their training interactively with the teacher to develop the applications and the topics of the studied framework. For this purpose, this article presents a modular approach for teaching module regarding three-phase thyristor rectifiers. A simulator based on the MATLAB equation solver has been developed by considering the detailed physical operation of such converters. In particular, the realized simulator takes various aspects into account, including continuous and discontinuous, commutation, its effect on the supply network and control parameters variations. The software modularity considers a very simple starting point and allows the extension to more complex topologies (bidirectional converters, cycloconverters and so on), maintaining always the same level of interaction with the students so that they can increase their skills and develop their own self-learning capability and self-training strategies.