DC-DC Converter performance on zinc polybromide battery

Zhou, Yu (2013) DC-DC Converter performance on zinc polybromide battery. Internship Report, Murdoch University.

Abstract

As a requirement of the degree of Bachelor of Engineering at Murdoch University, the students in the final year should undertake a thesis or an internship. During semester 2 of the final year in 2013, the intern enrolled in ENG450 Engineering Internship. The internship took place at Smart Energy Developments Pty Ltd, which is located on the Discovery Way, Murdoch University in Murdoch, Western Australia, an international company currently developing laboratory and manufacturing facilities in China. The internship was a unique opportunity to learn, as well as to apply all the knowledge of the intern gained in the university.

The internship work was completed under the industry supervision from Smart Energy, Chief Engineer Mike Dymond, and academic supervision from Dr Sujeewa Hettiwatte from Murdoch University.

The project was to assess the performance of a prototype DC-DC charge controller. The key performance parameters to be assessed were:

- Efficiency
- Current regulation
- Stability of control system
- Response time

The intern was required to work with the laboratory equipment to perform a range of tests, record the above parameters over a variety of operating conditions, and produce a report which would then summarise the results in table and graphical format. The DC-DC charge controller is a prototype, so the intern was also required to modify software or hardware when the issues were found and then re-test. Modifications were to be done with the support from the design engineer. The intern was to summarise a performance evaluation of DC-DC converter.

From the final year engineering internship project between the Murdoch University and the Smart Energy, the intern gained relevant industry experience and the skills in engineering based work.
The project process started from collecting material, and then building the prototype board, at last doing the performance testing of the efficiency, current regulation, response time and stability. The intern should complete a lot of plots in terms of the performance testing, and analyse the data and plots, and then give an inclusion of the analysing. From the efficiency testing, in both charging and discharging directions, the efficiencies are a little lower than the expectation, which should be around 95% in charging direction and 85% in discharging direction, the reason should be the core losses and the resistance losses of the inductors, as well as the power losses of the wire connection of each prototype board. For the response time and stability testing, the system performs well. The fast response time, and with the PI controller in the system, the stable current is almost the same as the set point, which means there is no off set, although sometimes there are some oscillations in the system performance, it can be get over by changing the value of the proportional parameters and the integral parameters in the system to obtain a better result.

Item Type:	Internship Report (Bachelor of Engineering)
Murdoch Affiliation(s):	School of Engineering and Information Technology
URI:	http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/22266

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