Development of tools for the study of chaotic behavior in power electronics

This paper describes the development of software tools for the analysis of chaos in power electronics systems. This project was motivated by potential contributions of chaos theory in the design, analysis and control of power electronics circuits. Nonlinear analysis software and computer programs were used for the detection and analysis of chaotic components. Simulations of power electronics devices were performed using commercially available circuit analysis packages. The voltage and current time series obtained from the circuit analysis were studied using the nonlinear analysis tools developed for this project as well as existing nonlinear analysis programs. The results of the nonlinear analysis can be used to design and implement better mitigating and control techniques for the circuits under study. Chaotic dynamics provide an alternate representation that can lead to better designs and new ways to explain nonlinear behavior in power electronics circuits. There is also a great pedagogical value in complementing the traditional representation of power electronic circuits with alternate models.