Electronic – time constant in LC circuit

circuit analysisdc/dc converterpower electronicsswitch-mode-power-supplytime constant

The excerpt below is from ASDTIC control and standardized interface circuits applied to buck, parallel and buck-boost dc to dc power converters.

On page 2, introduction section:

The electrical performance of a dc to dc converter depends, to a large
extent, on the quality of its control system. Unfortunately,
most single-loop approaches suffer from many inherent limitations:

  • The long time constant associated with the low-pass filter delays the rate of power-switch-modulation adjustment responding to a
    dynamic line and/or load disturbance, thus compromising the
    converter dynamic response.

What is time constant in LC circuit? I know time constant in RC, RL circuits but the time constant in LC circuit is somewhat strange to me.

Can anyone explain it?

Best Answer

What is time constant in LC circuit?

In the context of the paper you linked on switching converters, it is the response time introduced by the filter that causes problems. Basically it's the transient response time: -

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It is made more complex because the load can change and thus the damping ratio can change so it is difficult to know how long the output may take to get to within (say) 5% of its final settling point.

Because it is inside a feedback loop, instabilities can occur if not properly managed. When considered from the frequency domain, the RLC low pass filter can rapidly introduce a 180 degrees phase shift over a short span of frequencies from just below resonance to just above resonance: -

enter image description here

If you took the dotted-green curves as an example it appears to be roughly "butterworth" in shape and at 50% resonance it introduces a phase shift of about 35 degrees whereas at twice resonance this has shifted to about 145 degrees. This can easily cause instability if not properly managed.

In short, I believe they actually mean "time delay to reasonably settle" rather than the time constant associated with a simple RC network.

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