The limitation of car supply voltage (12V) forces to convert the
voltages to higher in order to power audio amplifiers.
In fact the max audio power x speaker (with 4 ohm impedance)
using 12V is (Vsupply+ - Vsupply-)^2/(8*impedance) 12^2/32 =
4.5Watts per channel, that is laughable...
For powering correctly an amplifier the best is to use a
symmetric supply with a high voltage differential. for example
+20 - -20 = 40Volts
in fact
40^2/32 = 50 Watts per channel that is respectable.
This supply is intended for two channels with 50W max each (of
course it depends on the amplifier used). Though it can be
easily scaled up or the voltages changed to obtain different
values.
Circuit Diagram
Overview - How it works
It is a classic push-pull design , taking care to obtain best
symmetry (to avoid flux walking). Keep in mind that this circuit
will adsorb many amperes (around 10A) so take care to reinforce
power tracks with lots of solder and use heavy wires from the
battery or the voltage will drop too much at the input.
The transformer must be designed to reduce skin effect, it can
be done using several insulated magnet wire single wires
soldered together but conducting separately. The regulation is
done both by the transformer turn ratio and varying the duty
cycle. In my case i used 5+5 , 10+10 turns obtaining a step up
ratio of 2 (12->24) and downregulating the voltage to 20 via
duty cycle dynamic adjust performed by the PWM controller TL494.
The step-up ratio has to be a little higher to overcome diode
losses, winding resistance and so on and input voltage drop due
to wire resistance from battery to converter.
Transformer design
The transformer must be of correct size in order to carry the
power needed, on the net there are many charts showing the power
in function of frequency and core size for a given topology. My
transformer size is 33.5 mm lenght, 30.0 height and 13mm width
with a cross section area of 1,25cm^2, good for powers around
150W at 50khz.
The windings , especially the primary must be heavy gauged, but
instead of using a single wire it is better to use
multiple wires in parallel each insulated from the other except
at the ends. This will reduce resistance increase due to skin
effect. The primary and secondary windings are centertapped,
this means that you have to wind 5 turns, centertap and 5
windings again. The same goes for the secondary, 10 turns,
centertap and 10 turns again.
The important thing is that the transformer MUST not have air gaps
or the leakage inductance will throw spikes on the switches
overheating them and giving a voltage higher than expected by
turn ratio prediction, so if your voltage output (at fully duty
cycle) is higher than Vin*N2/N1 - Vdrop diode, your transformer
has gap (of course permit me saying you that you are BLIND if
you miss it), and this is accompanied with a drastical
efficiency reduction. Use non-gapped E cores or toroids
(ferrite).
Output diodes, capacitors and filter inductor
For rectification i preferred to use shottky diodes since they
have low forward voltage drop, and are incredibly fast.
I used the cheap 1N5822, the best alternative for low voltage
converters (3A for current capability).
The output capacitors are 4700uF 25V, not very big, since at
high frequency the voltage ripple is most due to internal cap
ESR fortunately general purpose lytics have enough low esr for a
small ripple (some tens of millivolts). Also at high duty cycle
they are feed almost with pure DC, giving small ripple. The
filter inductor on the secondary centertap furter increases the
ripple and helps the regulation in asymmetrical transients
Power switch and driving
I used d2pak 70V 80A 0.004 ohms ultrafets (Fairchind
semiconductor), very expensive and hard to find. In principle
any fet will work, but the lower the on-resistance, the lower
the on-state conduction losses, the lower the heat produced on
the fets, the higher efficiency and smaller the heatsinks
needed. With this fets i am able to run the fets with small
heatsinks and without fan at full rated power (100W) with an
efficiency of 82% and perceptible heating and with small heating
at 120W (some degrees) (the core starts to saturate and the
efficiency is a bit lower, around 75%)
Try to use the lowest resistance mosfet you can put your dirty
hand :-) on or the efficiency will be lower than rated and you
will need even a small fan. The fet driver i used is the
TPS2811P, from Texas instruments, rated for 2A peak and 200ns.
Is important that the gate drive is optimized for minimal
inductance or the switching losses will be higher and you risk
noise coupling from other sources. Personally i think that
twisted pair wires (gate and ground/source) are the best to keep
the inductance small. Place the gate drive resistor near the
Mosfet, not near the IC.
Controller
I used the trusty TL494 PWM controller with frequency set at
around 40-60 Khz adjustable with a potentiometer. I also
implemented the soft start (to reduce powerup transients). The
adjust potentiometer (feedback) must be set to obtain the
desired voltage. The output signals is designed with two pull-up
resistors on the collector of the PWM chip output transistor
pulling them to ground each cycle alternatively. This signal is
sent to the dual inverting MOSFET driver (TPS2811P) obtaining
the correct waveform.
Power and filtering
How i said before the power tracks must be heavy gauged or you
will scarify regulation (since it depends of transformer step up
ratio and input voltage) and efficiency too. Don't forget to
place a 10A (or 15A) fuse on the input because the car batteries
can supply very high currents in case of shorts and this will
save you face from a mosfet explosion in case of failture or
short, remember to place a fuse also on the battery side to
increase the safety (accidental shorts->fire, battery explosion,
firemen, police and lawyers around). Input filtering is
important, use at least 20000uF 16V in capacitors, a filter
inductor would be useful too (heavygauged) but i decided to
leave it..
Final considerations
This supply given me up to 85% efficiency (sometimes even 90% at
some loads) with an input of 12V because i observed all these
tricks to keep it functional and efficient. An o-scope would be
useful, to watch the ripple and gate signals (watching for
overshoots), but if you follow these guidelines you will avoid
these problems.
The cross regulation is good but keep in mind that only the
positive output is fully regulated, and the negative only
follows it. Place a small load between the negative rail and
ground (a 3mm led with a 4.7Kohm resistor) to avoid the negative
rail getting lower then -20V. If the load is asymmetric you can
have two cases:
-More load on positive rail-> no problems, the negative rail can
go lower than -20V, but it is not a real issue for an audio
amplifier.
-More load on negative rail-> voltage drop on negative rail (to
ground) especially if the load is only on the negative rail.
Fortunately audio amplifiers are quite symmetrical as a load,
and the output filter inductor/capacitors helps to maintain the
regulation good during asymmetrical transients (Basses)
ATTENTION
Keep in mind that THIS IS NOT A PROJECT FOR A
BEGINNER, IT CAN BE VERY DANGEROUS IN
CASE OF PROBLEMS, NEVER BRIDGE, BYPASS OR AVOID
FUSES THESE WILL SAVE YOUR BACK FROM FIRE RISK.
|
FOR FIRST TESTING USE A SMALL 12V power supply and use
resistors as load monitoring switches heat and current
consumption (and output) and try to determine efficiency, if it
is higher then 70-75% you are set, it is enough. Adjust the
frequency for best compromise between power and switching
losses, skin effect and hysteresis losses
Bill Of Materials
=================
Design: 12V to 20V 100W DC-DC conv
Doc. no.: 1
Revision: 3
Author: Jonathan Filippi
Created: 29/04/05
Modified: 18/05/05
Parts List
--- --------- -----
Resistors
---------
2 R1,R2 = 10
4 R3,R4,R6,R7 = 1k
1 R5 = 22k
1 R8 = 4.7k
1 R9 = 100k
Capacitors
----------
2 C1,C2 = 10000uF
2 C3,C6 = 47u
1 C4 = 10u
3 C5,C7,C14 = 100n
2 C8,C9 = 4700u
1 C12 = 1n
1 C13 = 2.2u
Integrated Circuits
-------------------
1 U1 = TL494
1 U2 = TPS2811P
Transistors
-----------
2 Q1,Q2 = FDB045AN
Diodes
------
4 D1-D4 = 1N5822
1 D5 = 1N4148
Miscellaneous
-------------
1 FU1 = 10A
1 L1 = 10u
1 L2 = FERRITE BEAD
1 RV1 = 2.2k
1 RV2 = 24k
1 T1 = TRAN-3P3S
Source -
http://www.electronics-lab.com/projects/automotive/002/index.html
Author:
Jonathan
Filippi - jonathan.filippivirgilio.it
-www.cool-science.tk