Test strategies for power supplies

Author

Carmichael, Norman ; Camargo, Christopher ; Harrison, Travis ; Gomez, Ralph

Author_Institution

Southwest Res. Inst., San Antonio, TX, USA

fYear

1994

fDate

20-22 Sep 1994

Firstpage

681

Lastpage

692

Abstract

Functional and diagnostic testing of switching power supplies offers unique challenges. The control loop and the prevalence of destructive and avalanche failure modes make it difficult to analyze and diagnose many failures. Traditional approaches to resting were applied to power supplies and proved inadequate. This paper illustrates, through examples, some of the problems encountered and their solutions. This paper will also discuss the process through which a depot level power supply tester, the Advanced Power Supply Tester (APST), was defined. The tester features a software environment and Graphical User Interface (GUT) provided by LabWindows CVI and FineSoft, hardware consisting of an assembly of laboratory quality instrumentation, and diagnostic tools

Keywords

automatic test equipment; automatic test software; automatic testing; switched mode power supplies; Advanced Power Supply Tester; FineSoft; Graphical User Interface; LabWindows CVI; avalanche failure mode; control loop; depot level power supply tester; destructive failure modes; diagnostic testing; functional testing; software environment; switching power supplies; Assembly; Automatic testing; Circuit testing; Frequency measurement; Graphical user interfaces; Hardware; Instruments; Power measurement; Power supplies; Voltage;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

AUTOTESTCON '94. IEEE Systems Readiness Technology Conference. 'Cost Effective Support Into the Next Century', Conference Proceedings.

Conference_Location

Anaheim, CA

Print_ISBN

0-7803-1910-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/AUTEST.1994.381551

Filename

381551