auszo17 Power Tips: How fo limitirush curentin an ACID power supply - Power House - Blogs - THEZE Community Power Tips: How to limit inrush current in an AC/DC power supply Ga fe] When powering up an AC/DC power supply, a huge amount of energy transfers from the power source to the bulk capacitor. In this installment of Power Tips we examine how to limit inrush current in an AC/DC power supply. tw @oavaiv) | teens frnescy Paar a m fe = Figure 1: Inrush current of a power supply at 120VAC/6OHz input ‘Asa result of powering up an AC/DC power supply, you can observe an inrush current at the input of the power supply during power up transient (Figure 1). Ifthe inrush current is too large (where the power supply sunk too much energy in a short period of time), components in the power supply, such as fuse and rectifier diodes, might be damaged. Start with the peak inrush current estimation, this blog walk you through how the inrush current could damage circuit components and give you examples of inrush current limiting circuit. Consider the simplest AC/DC conversion, a half-wave rectifier, in Figure 2. htp:fe2e..comblogs_/upawerhuselarchive!201S1099tfpowertps-how-tolimi-nrush-curret-ir-ar-ac-de-power-supely 5aarzot7 Power Tips: How fo limitirush curentin an ACID power supply - Power House - Blogs - THEZE Community Vac ~) I Load Figure 2: A half-wave rectifier You can estimate the peak inrush current under a nooad condition with Equation 1: vy is the forward-voltage drop of the rectifier diode and Resqis the equivalent series resistance of capacitor C;, With Vp= 1V and Resg=10, the peak inrush current is 168A at a 120V,¢ input. This amount of inrush current is clearly over the current rating of most diodes used today. In addition, the inrush current can last for along period of time with a large capacitance on C,, which could lead to blowing up a fuse during power-up transient (the inrush energy over the fuse Pt rating) To avoid possible component damage caused by inrush current, an inrush-imiting circuit is generally required for an AC/DC power supply. The three types of inrush-limiting circuits designers use most are 2 negative temperature coefficient (NTC) thermistor, a relay, and a MOSFET bypass circuit. NTC thermistor An effective way to cut down the inrush current isto increase the resistance on the capacitor-charging path - inserting a resistor ike that shown in Figure 3. Ifyou insert a 2.50 resistor, the inrush current can easily be cut down below 70A at a 120Vgc input. But if you insert a 2.50 resistor in a 200W power supply for current-limiting purposes, you will have over 7W. power dissipation on the 2.50 resistor. An efficient way to cut down the inrush isto replace the resistor with an NTC thermistor (RT in Figure 4). Before the power supply powers up, the NTC thermistor is cool and holding a high resistance. Hence, the high resistance can be used to limit the inrush current during power up transient. During normal operation, the NTC thermistor is heated up and holding a low resistance - much lower than the fixed value resistor. For example, the 2.50. NTC thermistor used in Figure 4 becomes 0.50 at 100°C. The resistance reduction of NTC thermistor gives us lower power dissipation on the inrush current-limiting circuit. htp:fe2e..comblogs_/upawerhuselarchive!201S1099tfpowertps-how-tolimi-nrush-curret-ir-ar-ac-de-power-supely 25aarzot7 Power Tips: How fo limitirush curentin an ACID power supply - Power House - Blogs - THEZE Community Vac & | | Load Figure 3: A half-wave rectifier with resistor as inrush current limiter Figure 4; Input rectifier stage of PMP5141. Relay {An NTC thermistor provides a low-cost current-limiting circuit option, However, is still too lossy for a mito high power level (300W — few kilowatts) power supply. Using a relay can avoid huge losses on the current-limiting circuit. Figure 5 shows the relay circuit for a 1kW power supply. The relay is initially turned off. During power up, the input current flows through a 100/10W cement resistor. Once the power supply is energized, a regulated bias voltage, 12V2, turns on the relay to minimize the power dissipation on the current-limiting circuit during normal operation. htp:fe2e..comblogs_/upawerhuselarchive!201S1099tfpowertps-how-tolimi-nrush-curret-ir-ar-ac-de-power-supely a5auszo17 Power Tips: How fo limitirush curentin an ACID power supply - Power House - Blogs - THEZE Community ¢ ps : To brid o bridge 20v L109 0104 iis 7448052303 | O47uF rectifier ant av i< N 00 2 \ i ' vo t te R104 ' ' Sm @— eo ' ' pun ETERS VOC ' 1 MMSZ46997 1G i ' ae 010 i ' 7k ' ' BAS3I6.115, ‘ ' Inrush current limiting circuit, ' Figure 5: Input rectifier stage of a 1kW power supply MOSFET bypass circuit Besides relay, a MOSFET bypass circuit such as the one shown in Figure 6 provides another way to lower the current- limiting-circuit power dissipation. In Figure 6, a PFC boost circuit is applied. During normal operation, the boost circuit steps up the rectified input voltage, VREC, to a higher voltage level at node B+ (380Voc nominal). The MOSFET bypass circuit detects the voltage level of B+. Once the voltage at B+ is closed to 380Vpc, MOSFET Q2 is then turned on to avoid having high power dissipated on RT. htp:fe2e..comblogs_/upawerhuselarchive!201S1099tfpowertps-how-tolimi-nrush-curret-ir-ar-ac-de-power-supelyaarzot7 Power Tips: How fo limitirush current in an ACID power supply - Power House - Blogs - THEZE Community Figure 6: Input stage of PMP9531 Please see TI's power management reference design library for complete AC/DC power-supply designs and thelr current- limiting circuitries. Subscribe to the Power House blog Technical solutions, industry trends and insights for designing and managing power supplies. ‘Stefano Maggioni Figure 6 circuit is not correct: the current flows in Q2 diode bypassing RT1. RT1 must be placed on the input path before GND.. Cheers! Kiril Mihov Oops! Iwas wondering ifit is OK to drive the in-rush FET with a limited gate charging current through the linear region for some time? May be it doesn't matter, since as Stefano pointed out, the FET is placed backwards. Good luck! B ‘Sheng-yang Yul Stefano and Kiril, Thank you for point out the mistake | have made. Correct figure and description will be updated soon, htp:fe2e..comblogs_/upawerhuselarchive!201S1099tfpowertps-how-tolimi-nrush-curret-ir-ar-ac-de-power-supely 55