FREEDM was well represented at the 2018 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference held in San Antonio, Texas, March 5 through 8. In addition to co-sponsoring a booth on the exhibit floor with PowerAmerica, FREEDM students participated in technical and dialogue sessions. All the papers and posters presented by FREEDM students are available to our members at this link.

 

Byron Beddingfield, a Ph.D. candidate at NC State, demonstrated his system for advanced magnetics characterization. This novel test circuit can generate any waveform at high power and frequency to excite the material and component under test. Using silicon carbide devices, the circuit is rated for 1700 Volts DC and 75 Amps and can provide true ‘flat top’ trapezoidal current. Byron also wrote the test automation software for batch characterization. Byron claims “It’s so simple, an undergrad can test 200 set points in about 10 minutes.” This is a tremendous improvement over existing methods. The software will be open source, but NC State is seeking commercialization partners for related Intellectual Property. Special thanks to Tektronix for loaning equipment to make this testing possible. You can learn more technical details here.