29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Just get it..., August 8, 2004
I wonder if I am alone in being a bit concerned about the somewhat decreasing number of books on fundamental engineering topics. It's starting to be a bit of a worry- I have tried to dig into, for instance, the subject of IGBFET physics and actually came up with a rather good book. But generally, this is getting to be hard work and good luck.
Take this book, for instance. If this book suddenly went out of print, loads, and I am serious here, MANY of us would be in dead trouble, because there are just not so many books in this league. By the way, go and buy the book by Keith Billings as well. These two dovetail together beautifully. I think these two gentlemen were good friends and decided to corner the market with two definitive texts. Sneaky! Thanks though guys.
This book is a very fresh and approachable encyclopedia of the whole area, just about. The chapters are all very comprehensive and go right the way through the beginnings of the subject to very detailed focus on many diverse issues.
When I use the word "encyclopedia", don't be put off. The real temptation is to read it like a novel, and why not, it's totally addictive, well written, and you go away really feeling very enlightened.
Great points in favour are the huge chapters on bridge, half bridge, flyback, feedfoward, current mode, and current fed architectures. These are pretty exhaustive and tell you the whole bit - including reasons to choose them and reasons NOT to choose them.
The chapter about feedback loops and stability could have been written to put you off, but even this subject is very accessible here.
Mr Pressman passed away a while ago sadly, so no more new editions of this book, I'm afraid. It is inevitable that there are some subjects not covered. Among these, planar transformers is ...possibly... a bit vexing, as this is quite hard to dig up (try joining the IEEE, that tends to fix things). Another subject is MOSFET switching losses and the peculiarities of schottky rectifiers... But that's OK, since a lot of this is covered by the book by Vítezslav Benda and the applications notes by ST and International Rectifier on the web very well.
Harder to spot are books covering the new classes of very high frequency convertors, and the engineering issues (esp. EMI)covering them.
None of these are detriments to the book - which is excellent.
The book tends to concentrate on the theory of the general classes of circuit, while Keith Billings book concentrates on the various problems arising in all and every kind of topology.
Wheras this book will tell you about the voltage waveforms in half bridge convertors in great detail, Keith Billings book will tell you about low voltage protection, soft start, and rectification (thought that was trivial? Wrong....) issues. These are usually independent of which configuration is in play.
I should say that you should go and read more of this stuff. The Benda book is good, but so are half a dozen books which are out of or going out of print. Scramble while you can.
This appears to be a subject area in which maths becomes suddenly important, and gives the lie to the general belief that engineers don't need it - a bit like filter theory, deeper than you think.
Anyway, enjoy the swim and don't be afraid of drowning!
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent and throrough text on Switching Power Supplies, April 29, 2004
After reviewing this text, I found that it contains a wealth of information on various types of DC-DC converters including boost, buck, flyback, forward, and other topologies. The book gives a good treatment of the theory of operation along with describing equations and also practical information for less experienced engineers or technicians. It also contains a good treatment on control for SMPS's including the details of how Pulse Width Modulation feedback control works. I highly recommend this text for the practicing electronics or electrical engineer. The book is very thorough and it should be in your collection if you are involved in the design and/or analysis of switched supplies, associated circuitry, and power magnetics.
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