Function block modelling of power electronic circuits using VisSim

Computer technology has long held the promise of providing power electronic system developers with the means of mathematically modelling their circuits in software and then testing them by simulating their performance under operating conditions. The appeal of this approach is that it removes the need for early prototyping, which is both expensive and time-consuming. Over the past few years, a number of high level development environments have emerged that allow the developer to bring together many sophisticated mathematical tools in order to create a model of any dynamic system on a computer without getting involved in programming, or indeed without a great understanding of the mathematical techniques used. Here, the author describes VisSim which is one of these products and allows the developer to create the model and simulate it simply by entering the block diagram of the circuit