Fundamentals of Power Electronics, Second Edition

Robert W. Erickson and Dragan Maksimović organize power electronics around reusable mechanisms rather than a catalogue of topologies. The distinctive thread is a sequence from switch-state circuits, through equilibrium and averaged equivalent circuits, to perturbation, transfer functions, feedback, impedance interaction, and measurement. That sequence remains a particularly strong explanation of why a regulated converter behaves differently from its schematic alone.

What the book contributes #

Physical pages 20-202 develop equilibrium, losses, discontinuous conduction, switch realization, isolated and non-isolated converter families, and stress/utilization. Physical pages 203-499 form the book's strongest contribution: averaging, state-space and averaged-switch models, canonical small-signal circuits, Bode construction, right-half-plane zeros, controller design, loop-gain measurement, input-filter interaction, DCM dynamics, and current-programmed control. Physical pages 500-598 connect magnetic-circuit models to copper, core, skin, proximity, leakage, window, and flux-density constraints. Physical pages 599-707 cover nonsinusoidal power, line-current harmonics, line-commutated and PWM rectifiers. Physical pages 708-814 treat resonant tanks, load-dependent conversion, ZCS/ZVS boundaries, quasi-resonant switch cells, active clamps, and auxiliary commutation. Appendices B and C turn averaged models and the extra-element theorem into practical simulation and analysis tools.

Three ideas were promoted into new GTK chapters:

• an averaged model is a bandwidth-limited model of slow state envelopes, not a smoothed switching waveform that remains valid at the switching frequency;
• an input EMI filter and a regulated converter form a coupled minor loop, so attenuation alone cannot establish stability;
• soft switching is a timed commutation condition whose benefit and boundary depend on device capacitance, recovered charge, leakage energy, load, dead time, and tank current.

Visual audit #

All 882 physical pages were rendered and inspected. The visual ledger records 651 physical pages containing figure or table captions, with 990 figure-caption lines and 33 table-caption lines detected in the extracted text. The information-bearing visuals are overwhelmingly circuit topologies, switch-state equivalents, waveforms, Bode plots, impedance asymptotes, magnetic circuits, design charts, and operating-region plots. No source raster was retained: the three load-bearing teaching visuals used by GTK were independently redrawn as theme-aware SVGs after full-resolution inspection of the corresponding source pages. Photographs and period-specific component tables were not needed to preserve the mechanisms.

Currentity and limits #

The supplied object is the 2001 second edition (sixth printing, 2004), not the 2020 third edition. Its fundamental models and derivations remain valuable, but device surveys, commercial part tables, simulation syntax, harmonic-standard tables, and statements about practical switching-frequency ranges are historical. GTK therefore uses current official material for present-day claims: Springer's third-edition scope, current TI modeling and converter application reports, and the current consolidated IEC 61000-3-2 edition. The 2001 tables headed IEC 1000-3-2 and IEEE 519 are not reproduced as current limits.

Reading evidence #

The complete page ledger, visual ledger, concept map, claim audit, identity fingerprint, ambiguities, and reconciliation capsule are stored under docs/source-audits/power-electronics-and-computer-electronics-2026-08-21/. The archived PDF is byte-identical to the supplied source.