Chaos in Power Electronics & Power Supplies (4 of 5)

Solution

The following are some considerations for solving chaos problems.

Stable
Investigators wanting to create chaos often start with nearly unstable circuits. This suggests avoiding chaos by making sure the circuit is robustly stable.

Fast
The parasitics of transistors and diodes often provide energy states that contribute to chaos. One of the simplest chaotic circuits is a series R-L-Diode, a prototype for many rectifier circuits showing chaos. These circuit investigations require a slow diode. This suggests that substituting faster diodes or transistors may solve chaos problems. [DEAN89A]

Circuits
Ripple (also called bang-bang or hysteretic) regulators are deceptively simple, but prone to chaos. Current-mode control circuits and overcurrent protection circuits are also prone to chaos, the latter partly because they are often poorly stabilized. One should push these circuits beyond the worse-case limits while looking for the signs of chaos. If found they may not be detrimental to the design. The timeline of key papers and the bibliography should give additional clues to solution approaches - or lack of them.