Lab 5: Design of a DC Power Supply

Learning objectives:

- To design, build and test a DC power supply (PS), which converts AC voltage to DC voltage.

- To understand the technical trade-offs involved in the design of a DC PS.

- To apply engineering reasoning in the process of evaluating design options.

- To practise the language of technical argument and reasoning - being succinct, accurate and coherent.

- To understand the purpose of the specification of requirements (SoR)

- To understand the principles of testing against a SoR

Each lab in this module helps you complete one part of the analysis and calculations needed for the DC power supply design in this lab. You are therefore expected to compile the necessary preparation work as you progress through the labs.

DESIGN TASK:

Your task is to design a power supply circuit (comprising a rectifier with a reservoir capacitor, and a

regulator) that can be mounted as a daughter-board module on the main circuit board for which the regulated

power supply is required. The input to the module is the low AC voltage with 12V rms, 50Hz. The signal is

generated by the AC to AC adaptor as shown in Figure 1. A pair of 4mm cable test sockets is utilized to feed out

the signal to a breadboard.

The fuse will blow in the event of a high current, removing power from the power supply circuit.