High performance test equipment for 12 V and 42 V automotive components

Many industrial branches refer to officially defined standards or recommendations concerning their products. Companies of automotive industry, however, define their own technical requirements. As a consequence technical issues like quality of voltage in vehicle power supply systems are different between the companies. A test generator coping with the requirements of most automotive companies at the same time is not available in the market so far. Consequently automotive suppliers use different test equipment depending on the respective customer. A power function generator for testing of 12 V and 42 V components was developed as a co-operation project between university and industry. The generator is able to feed supply currents of 30 A. The output voltage shape can be defined with a high degree of freedom and is repeated cyclically. Voltage rise times of 3 /spl mu/s and short time voltage drops and/or voltage interrupts can be produced. Of course, slow rise and decrease of the voltage can be realized as well. Additional oscillations of 100 kHz can be superposed to the output voltage. These features make the "voltage ripple generator" superior to commercial products available on market today.