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4 months ago in Power Electronics By Veena

In a dcm buck converter, how is peak inductor current related to load?

In discontinuous conduction mode, the inductor current goes to zero each cycle. How do I relate the peak current to the actual load current?

All Answers (1 Answers In All)

By Kushi Gupta Answered 1 month ago

In DCM, the average load current equals the average inductor current over a switching cycle. For a triangular current waveform rising from zero to I_peak and back, the average over one switching period is I_load = (I_peak × (D + D2))/2, where D is the charging duty cycle and D2 is the discharging fraction. If you know D and D2, you can solve for I_peak. The key: load current is not simply I_peak—it's the triangular area averaged over time.

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