POWERSIM (PSIM)

Contents
• What is PSIM
• Circuit structure
• Getting started with PSIM
• Hands on examples
 What is PSIM ?
• PSIM is a simulation package specifically
designed for power electronic and control
circuits
• It is manufacture by Powersim Inc.
(www.powersimtech.com)
• It allows fast simulation and it has a friendly user
interface
• PSIM provides a powerful simulation
environment for power converter analysis,
control loop design, and motor drive system
studies.
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• The PSIM simulation package consists of three
programs:

1 SIMCAD circuit schematic editor (input: *.sch)

2 PSIM PSIM simulator (input: *.cct; output: *.txt)

3 SIMVIEW Waveform Processor (input: *.txt)

 Circuit Structure
• A circuit is represented in PSIM in four blocks:
power circuit, control circuit, sensors, and switch
controllers.
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• Power circuit
 The power circuit consists of switching devices, RLC branches,
transformers, and coupled inductors.
• Control circuit
 The control circuit is represented in block diagram. Components in s
domain and z domain, logic components (such as logic gates and flip
flops), and nonlinear components (such as multipliers and dividers) can
be used in the control circuit.
• Sensor
 Sensors measure power circuit voltages and currents and pass the values
to the control circuit.
• Control circuit
 Gating signals are then generated from the control circuit and sent back to
the power circuit through switch controllers to control switches
Software/Hardware Requirement PSIM

• PSIM runs in Microsoft Windows environment

(95/98/NT/2000) on PC computers.
• The minimum RAM memory requirement is
32 MB.
 Installing the Program
• A quick installation guide is provided in the
flier “PSIM - Quick Guide” and on the
CDROM.
• Some of the files in the PSIM directory are:
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 Simulating a Circuit
• To simulate the sample one-quadrant chopper circuit
“chop.sch”:
• Start SIMCAD. Choose Open from the File menu to load the
file “chop.sch”.
• From the Simulate menu, choose Run PSIM. PSIM simulator
will read the netlist file and start simulation. The simulation
results will be saved to File “chop.txt”. Any warning messages
occurred in the simulation will be saved to File
“message.doc”.
• If the option Auto-run SIMVIEW is not selected in the
Options menu, from the Simulate menu, choose Run
SIMVIEW to start SIMVIEW, and select curves for display. If
the option Auto-run SIMVIEW is selected, SIMVIEW will be
launched automatically.
Getting started
Example 1: 1st order system
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Example 2: voltage controller
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Example 3: semi-converter
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Insert the sources for the angle alpha and for
the enable signal
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Connect the gate signals, insert a simulation
control (50 ms) ands set all the parameters
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Run the circuit for alpha equals to 30, 60, and
90 degrees. Check the results