Just wanted thoughts on this design.



It's very similar to your standard boost converter, but it takes advantage of the properties of having multiple inductors. Inductors, of course, change fast in parallel and slow in series (relative to one another). An issue I see with your standard boost converter is that, because of how long it takes to charge the inductor, it has a limit to how high of a voltage it can output (which usually isn't much) simply because the capacitor will discharge much of the voltage before it can be charged again.

The idea of this converter is to solve that problem by minimizing the time it takes to charge the inductive components. If they spend almost all their time discharging and only a small amount charging, voltage can be increased substantially and ripple can be minimized.

Specs of the components in the diagram may not be accurate to real life, but focus should be put on the circuit as a whole instead anyways.

EDIT: I just told you all that the specs of the components may not be accurate to real life. I know it will not actually use 1h inductors. The simulation automatically marked them as such.

 

I see a lot of diode losses there- all adding in series.

 

One Henry? Isn't that an extremely large coil? I don't know inductors very well but wouldn't a large coil take longer to charge up as opposed to one that is 1mH? A thousand times smaller and a thousand times faster. No?

 

And that there are no simulators?

 

How would you propose to sequence the switches? What kind of boost ratio would you expect? How will you fabricate a 1H inductor?

 

And that there are no simulators?

Oh....wait....of course there are simulators accessible to the unwashed masses.

 

Can you imagine the Back EMF from a 1H inductor? That'd blow my fillings out of my mouth just watching it. Even at 5V charge.

 

Can you imagine the Back EMF from a 1H inductor? That'd blow my fillings out of my mouth just watching it. Even at 5V charge.

Such an inductance will have a quite noticeable parasitic capacitance (500-1000 pF), and it will limit the inductive emission. There will also be parasitic fluctuations.

 

One Henry? Isn't that an extremely large coil? I don't know inductors very well but wouldn't a large coil take longer to charge up as opposed to one that is 1mH? A thousand times smaller and a thousand times faster. No?

A one Henry inductor used to be very common in DC power supplies. They are not small nor light, nor cheap. And they also do have some actual resistance. So the circuit proposed would be terribly expensive and not very efficient.In addition, getting perfect synchronization for those switches will not be simple. And besides those issues, there will be voltage breakdown in the switches farther away from the start.
So the proposed circuit will be vastly more expensive than other methods, although it could possibly work. Maybe in a simulator.

 

The only reason for any difference in Charge vs Discharge times is caused by Power-Supply-Resistance.

This scheme will not provide any overall advantages.

Use a "Push-Pull" Driver-Setup and a Toroidal-Transformer for much better efficiency.
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See.

 

Build it with real Components, and then measure and document.

Simulations are always limited in how a real Circuit will perform in the real World.
Losses are everywhere.
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Build it with real Components, and then measure and document.

Simulations are always limited in how a real Circuit will perform in the real World.
Losses are everywhere.
.
.
.

Building that circuit with actual real components will be a rather expensive project. What sort of switches would be used?? They will need to be rather special types. I suspect. The specifications in the simulation are "interesting " already.
Some simulations are more like cartoons, not reflecting the real-world adequately. That circuit will also produce a whole lot of electrical noise.
So from this we are reminded, and hopefully learn, that just because it works in simulation does not make it a valid circuit. Not at all practical.

 

I see a lot of diode losses there- all adding in series.

Schottky diodes should help to alleviate that.

 

One Henry? Isn't that an extremely large coil? I don't know inductors very well but wouldn't a large coil take longer to charge up as opposed to one that is 1mH? A thousand times smaller and a thousand times faster. No?

Again, these are not supposed to be the real specs for the components. That was just the default value the simulation chose. This is just a basic overview of what it would be like