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Building a supply to regulate between 400A-100A

Braeden Hamson

Feb 18, 2016
240
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Feb 18, 2016
Messages
240
I've got a bit of a bear of a problem to tackle. I need to determine the rating of in house fuses for my student racing team. This is an overcurrent protection fuse for a 21700 cell. The issue is that a the 21700 we're using can handle 45A and not really mind. This means the fuse for overcurrent protection needs to be very significant. I need to determine the opening times of this fuse from 1/10th of a second out to about a minute and lots of different times in between those two points. So this will probably be upwards of 400A and at least 100A for a minute. Serious currents across what is basically a dead short.

We are an EV team, so I'm no stranger to high voltage and high currents. Getting 400A is simple enough, with enough hobby lipo batteries in parallel you can achieve this. However, regulating this current is the issue for me now.

In the past I've used resistors to do this, is there perhaps a more elegant way? The resistors didn't give me very good control over the currents which would be desirable.

Does anyone have any ideas for a method to do this that gives me perhaps 10A-30A resolution?
 

danadak

Feb 19, 2021
751
Joined
Feb 19, 2021
Messages
751
One approach :


This basic circuit could be adapted using .Kelvin sensing o.pf a shunt to regulate base drive
of transistor array.


Some ideas here :


Use high power IGBT in control loop[ :


Or use IEGT :



Or high power MOSFET :

https://www.littelfuse.com/~/media/..._power_semiconductors_product_catalog.pdf.pdf

As you know this is very challenging design area. I am not a designer in this area, but called on a Plasma
and welding design company, got an appreciation of talented experienced senior designers in this area.
We were supply high power MOSFETs and IGBTs to them. Design challenges, gate driving, control loops......
very challenging.


Regards, Dana.
 
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