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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON EDUCATION, VOL. 51, NO. 1, FEBRUARY 2008

Project-Based Lab Teaching for

Power Electronics and Drives
Rui Hong Chu, Dylan Dah-Chuan Lu, Member, IEEE, and S. Sathiakumar, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractProject-based learning motivates students to learn

actively, so it has been widely applied to many engineering subjects. However, the applications of this approach are limited in
electric power courses because of the hazards associated with
high voltage or mains voltage (240 V in Australia). This paper
presents a project designed for a Power Electronics and Drives
course. In this project, students use a programmable intelligent
computer (PIC) microcontroller and an H-bridge to design a
control system for a real practical application, such as a washing
machine, tram, or electric lift. Students gain hands-on experience,
and also improve their skill in product development, self-directed
learning, teamwork, and project management. Practical projects
increase the challenge for students and, hence, their interest level.
The project includes both hardware and software. Each part of
the project and the student assessment are described here.
Index TermsH-bridge, motor control, programmable intelligent computer (PIC) microcontroller, project-based lab teaching.

I. INTRODUCTION

ABORATORY and practical classes play an important role

in the education of scientists and engineers [1]. In the field
of engineering education, the latest research shows that laboratory work greatly increases students understanding. In addition, such practical work develops students towards the following learning goals [2]:
gaining practical skills and experience with equipment;
linking theory and practice;
gathering, manipulating, and interpreting data;
forming and testing hypotheses;
developing problem solving techniques;
becoming motivated and excited.
Lab classes are normally a necessary part of a curriculum for
electrical and electronic courses at the School of Electrical and
Information Engineering, University of Sydney, Australia. In a
lab class, students work in a group, follow a lab manual, set
up a circuit, test items required in the manual, and then analyze results. In this paper, this teaching procedure is referred to
as routine lab teaching, for comparison with project-based lab
teaching approach. Students can achieve the specified goals provided they are already keen to learn and to think for themselves.
Routine lab teaching, however, is felt to be ineffective in generating student enthusiasm and passion for learning. In this case,

Manuscript received December 7, 2006; revised June 24, 2007.

The authors are with the School of Electrical and Information Engineering,
Darlington Campus, The University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia (e-mail:
ruihong@ee.usyd.edu.au).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TE.2007.906607

students may not fully achieve the required goals, or may be

slow to reach their full creative talent and engineering potential.
Project-based learning is a student-centered strategy that fosters initiative and focuses the student on authentic real-world,
open-ended projects that can increase motivation for the majority of students, and enhance their learning [3], [4]. Students
not only maximize their practical learning experience to achieve
the listed above goals, but also develop other important abilities
in the following.
Cooperation and group work: students must learn to communicate in order to distribute the workload, discuss problems, and integrate the overall program.
Self-directed learning: as a project may involve multidisciplinary knowledge which is not standard lecture material,
students are driven to study and seek solutions which serve
to enhance their understanding of the theoretical material.
Project management: students organize a task based on the
talents of each group member, and each must define their
own task and manage their progress against a specified
timeline.
Product design: students have more scope to develop the
project so as to display their inventiveness.
All of these abilities are critical requirements in engineering
education.
Project-oriented learning for an electric machinery course
has been recently described [5], [6] which used embedded controller or computer-assisted methods to control machines. By
providing students with the opportunity to apply the knowledge
they have learned, the electric machinery course becomes more
appealing to them. However, in a course on Power Electronics
and Drives, high mains voltage, as well as the mechanical
hazards associated with motors, make it difficult to introduce
project-based lab teaching. To solve this problem, a project is
introduced which uses a programmable intelligent computer
(PIC) microcontroller and H-bridge to design a control system
for dc machines in order to simulate a practical application,
such as, a washing machine, an electric lift, or a tram or robot.
Senior students are perfectly safe working in the laboratory as
the power source and the control signals are all below 20 V.
Sections II and III of this paper present an overview of the
course and of the project, respectively. Sections IV, V, and VI
present details of this project, which include a PIC motor development (PIC_MCD) board, an H-bridge, and software development for the application of a washing machine and electric lift.
Section VII reports student feedback on the course.
II. COURSE OVERVIEW
Power Electronics and Drives is a third-year undergraduate
core subject in Electrical, Aerospace, and Mechatronic Engi-

0018-9359/$25.00 2008 IEEE

CHU et al.: PROJECT-BASED LAB TEACHING FOR POWER ELECTRONICS AND DRIVES

Fig. 1. Block diagram of the power electronics drive system.

neering at the University of Sydney. Conducted over the 13

weeks of one semester, the course consists of a weekly twohour lecture, supported by an alternating three-hour lab and a
one-hour tutorial. The topics covered in the course include fundamentals of magnetism and mechanics, dc machines, power
electronics devices, dcac, dcdc and acdc switching power
converters, 3-phase, 6-pulse rectifiers, and electronic control
of dc machines. The practical work includes four routine labs
and the project. The four routine labs (dc generator and motor,
three-phase rectifier, dc boost converter, and 4-quadrant dc machine control) are held in the first half of the semester, and familiarize students with real-world power electronics and machine
processes. The project started in the middle of the semester, immediately after the completion of the four routine labs, when
students had gained adequate theoretical knowledge (from lectures) and laboratory skills (from routine labs).
III. PROJECT SETUP AND ORGANIZATION
The project implements a power electronics drive system
shown in Fig. 1, using a PIC microcontroller and an H-bridge
to drive a dc motor for a particular application. Each part of the
setup in Fig. 1 is described briefly below.
Load: Students need to decide on an end application (load) to
implement the control process, for example, a washing machine,
an electric lift, a tram, a robotic system, etc.
Each different load application requires a particular type of
motor control.
DC motor: A 12-V, 1-A, 8100-rpm dc electric motor is provided. The motor can output 5.56 W of power and 40 g.cm of
torque, which is adequate to simulate a particular application
and safe for students to test in a laboratory.
Power electronics: Students need to develop the hands-on experience to build a H-bridge for a motor drive, is detailed in
Section V.
Microcontroller: The H-bridge needs the correct sequence of
pulses, known as pulse-width-modulation (PWM) control technique [7], at the gate-source terminals of the MOSFETs in order
to drive a motor. Students use a standard PIC_MCD board and
associated MPLAB package [8] and MCD bootloader for software development. Students program the PIC microcontroller
using Assembly or C programming language to output suitable
PWM pulses to the H-bridge. See Section IV for details.

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Power sources: The PIC_MCD board operates at 5 V dc.

The power source for the student-made H-bridge can be operated from 10 V dc to 20 V dc. A Topward dc supply with
two outputs of 30 V, 2 A, and one output of 5 V, 3 A is sufficient
to power all the circuits in the laboratory.
Transducers/sensors: The transducers are used to sense a
signal of voltage, current, speed, torque or shaft position of the
load, which is sent back to the microcontroller to monitor and
regulate desired output variables. Students are required to design and build their own sensing circuits to provide a feedback
signal to the microcontroller. Details are given in Section VI.
To guide students in developing the project, they are given
the following basic required specifications as a baseline which
is not intended to be limiting.
Washing machine
Mimic the washing, rinsing and spin drying modes.
Spin in either direction and with different speeds in the
modes.
Use a graphical user interface (GUI) or push-button
and knob on the PIC_MCD board for washing program
selection.
Model train
Mimic the train going from one station to another by
showing the slow start to full steady state speed of the
motor, and vice versa.
Mimic the train going backwards slowly, in order to adjust its relative position to the platform.
Use a GUI or push-button and knob on the PIC_MCD
board to select different tracks.
Electric lift
Mimic a lift going up and down with frequent stops for
passengers going in and out of the lift.
Mimic different passenger weights on the lift with entry
and exit at different levels.
Use a GUI or push-button and knob on the PIC_MCD
board to choose different levels and stops.
During the last six weeks of the semester, the 82 students in
the class were placed in groups of 46 people for the project
work. Project support took several forms:
the scheduled lecture, tutorial, and laboratory sessions offered adequate support and discussion for students to develop a basic understanding of the drive system;
the laboratory was readily available during university
hours;
the necessary equipment (dc power supply, oscilloscope,
dc motor, soldering station, veroboard, wires, and computers loaded with the MPLAB software and bootloader)
were available in the laboratory;
components for making an H-bridge were provided;
a website which included all of the relevant information for
the project was provided;
students could choose an alternative application, in consultation with the laboratory supervisor, upon which to implement the drive system.
At the end of the project, each student was assessed on their
individual report of the project and their contributions to the
group work. In the individual report, students were required to
display their understanding of the overall project, and in par-

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of complementary or four PWM signals to control the gates

of the four MOSFETs in the H-bridge. The ADC was used
to implement feedback control of the motor drive system by
connecting sensing circuits to 20-pin headers, or to existing
three finger-adjust pots on the board. A RS232 port provided
a GUI interface and also allowed input from product users.
Other functions, such as emergency stop, rotation control,
and start/stop can be implemented by using four pushbutton
switches on the board. The serial 8-bit LED indicators and their
different combinations gave the appropriate indications for a
motor operating in various stages and were also very helpful in
developing the software program. A MPLAB ICD2 debugger
[8] or a PRESTO that has a Microchip ICSP compatible programming port and that supports the PIC18F4431 chip was
used to program the microcontroller. Due to a limited supply
of MPLAB ICD2 and PRESTO programmers, some students
used the MCD bootloader and RS232 port to program the
microcontroller.
Fig. 2. The layout of PIC_MCD board.

ticular, describe their own contribution to the project in detail.

The assessment of the group work was conducted through group
presentations, where each student explained and demonstrated
the operation of the product they had designed. This assessment
scheme was fair and comprehensive for the students and prevented possible plagiarism.
IV. PIC18F4431 MOTOR CONTROL DEVELOPMENT
BOARDPIC_MCD
The PIC18F4431 MCD Board is designed to allow a
Microchip 18F4431 microcontroller to be easily interfaced to
the dc/ac motor control power electronics, as shown in Fig. 2.
This particular microcontroller has an inbuilt PWM module
with provision for up to four sets of complementary drive
waveforms and a nine channel 10-b A/D converter. Despite its
suitability for PWM applications, the PIC_MCD Board can
also be used as a general-purpose microcontroller development
board. The main features of the PIC_MCD board are
four complementary pairs of PWM output;
four pushbutton switches;
three finger-adjustable pots for analog inputs connecting to
analog-to- digital converter (ADC) modules;
RS232 port;
serial 8-bit LED indicator;
serial EEPROM;
2-mm and 4-mm sockets for the power supply connection;
two programming sockets: one general-purpose 5-pin
header for use with a PRESTO programmer or similar;
one Microchip ICSP programmer or compatible;
processor reset switch;
external access to processor pins via two banks of 20-pin
headers, that can easily be connected with an external PCB
or circuit.
A PIC_MCD board was provided to each group for this
project. Students used the board to output either two pairs

V. H-BRIDGEPOWER CONVERTER
The schematic circuit diagram of an isolated 4-quadrant
converter is shown in Fig. 3. Students were required to build
and test the converter based on the circuit. The MOSFETs
(FQPF65N06) Q1Q4 are the heart of the converter, which provides the average voltage (positive or negative) across the load
(motor) connected to the OUTPUT and current flows in either
is obtained, in
direction. The equation
which
is the output voltage,
is the DC supply voltage,
is the duty cycle of Q1 and Q4. The duty cycle of Q2
and
. From the above equation, it can be
and Q3 is simply
seen that the magnitude and polarity of the output voltage are
controlled by the duty cycle in this converter.
In order to switch the MOSFET Q1Q4 properly, two gate
drivers (IR2101) and four opto-couplers (HCPL2200) are
necessary. After programming suitable PWM signals to the
PIC_MCD board, the four PWM signals are sent to Q1, Q2,
Q3, and Q4 of the connector INPUT on the H-bridge by a 9-pin
D connector on the PIC_MCD board. The PWM signals are
fed to the LED anode of the opto-couplers. The phototransistor
amplifies the input signal and provides an isolated signal to the
inputs of the gate drivers. The two gate drivers provide gate
signals to the MOSFET Q1, Q2, Q3, and Q4, and Q1/Q2 or
Q3/Q4 are switched in a complementary manner.
A voltage of 15 V dc is supplied for the integrated circuits
opto-couplers and gate-drivers. Another 12 V is connected to
dc to provide dc bus voltage of the power converter.
VI. SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
A. Motor Control Strategy
The PWM control strategy is applied to a 4-quadrant converter for the motor drive system [7]. Fig. 4 shows the relationship between duty cycles of the PWM, and motor speed as well
as rotation. As shown by the equation in Section V, when the
duty cycle of the PWM is 50%, the average voltage across the
armature of a motor is zero, and, hence, the motor is stationary.
As the duty cycle increases, the speed of the motor increases
until it reaches the maximum speed in one direction at the duty

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111

Fig. 3. The schematic circuit diagram of the isolated 4-quadrant converter.

Fig. 4. Relationship between duty cycles of PWM and motor movement.

cycle of 100%, and vice versa. Therefore, the speed and rotation of a dc motor can be adjusted by PWM signals from the
microcontroller.
B. MicrocontrollerPIC 18F4431
Microchips PIC 184431 microcontroller [9], which has the
PWM module designed particularly for power and motion control applications, was chosen for this project. The operation of
the PWM module is controlled by a total of 22 registers, which
are PWM control, PWM timer control, dead time control, PWM
period and duty cycle registers. In order for the motor to operate quietly, a switching frequency of between 520 kHz is programmed by PWM time base registers (PTMRH and PTMRL)
and PWM period registers (PTPERH and PTPERL). The dead
is set in the dead time control regtime of between 510
ister (DTCON) to protect MOSFETs. There are a total of 4 pairs
of PWM duty cycle registers defined by PDCx registers, which
generate four pairs of PWM channels that can be defined as independent or complementary mode through the PWM control
registers 0 and 1 (PWMCON0 and PWMCON1). In this project,
two pairs of complementary PWM outputs are required to control four MOSFETs in the H-bridge.
The PIC 18F4431 has a 10-b high-speed ADC module that
can be applied to motor control, sensor interfacing, and data
acquisition. The module has 9 registers, which consist of an
A/D result high/low register (ADRESH and ADRESL), A/D
control registers, an A/D channel select register (ADCHS),
and analog I/O select registers. In this project students used an
ADC that was connected to the finger-adjustable pots on the
PIC_MCD board in order to change the duty cycle either to
control the speed of a motor, or to interface with the feedback
control circuits.

C. Software Development for a Washing Machine

In this subsection, a washing machine is used as an example to
illustrate the details of software development. As stated above,
students can use either Assembly or C language to develop the
software. Since students enrolled in this subject had different
levels of knowledge of the microcontrollers, a sample code in
ASSEMBLY was provided, in which the basic configuration of
the PIC 18F4431 and PIC_MCD boards, the initializations of
the PWM module and the ADC module, and the concept of the
changing duty cycles of the PWM, were presented. Given this
information, and discussion with the lab supervisor, students
could quickly get on the right track.
The conceptual design of a washing machine from one group
of students is shown in Fig. 5. A user can select the options, auto,
heavy, regular, and light wash, from the liquid crystal display
(LCD). At any time, the exit/stop button can be pushed to stop
the machine and jump back to the beginning of the program [10].
Except for the programming of the LCD module, push button
and menu selection, the principal tasks were to program the
PWM and the ADC module, which are the main functions of
the PIC 18F4431 used in this project. If the selection made is
of heavy, regular, or light wash mode, the different duty cycle
values of D are set to the duty cycle register PDCx to start the
wash in one direction. Then a delay of 1.5 s and the turning off
of the PWM are executed. After this, a duty cycle of (1-D) is
loaded to the duty cycle register to start the wash in the opposite
direction, again followed by a delay of 1.5 s and the turning off
of the PWM. The whole process is repeated if necessary.
The ADC is used for speed feedback control to implement
the auto wash mode. Fig. 6 shows the schematic block diagram
of the closed loop system which uses a generator and a gearbox
to generate a voltage as a feedback signal, which is sent to the
ADC module on the PIC_MCD board. To ensure that the analog
required by
signal from the generator is within the
the microcontroller, a gearbox was used to change the angular
velocity.
To bring the washing machine closer to a mature product,
students developed several extra features. For example, push
buttons were affixed to the exterior of the system through the
external interrupt pins of the microcontroller to allow communication between users and the system; the HD44780U dot matrix LCD controller was used for the output interface, to yield a

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Fig. 5. Conceptual design of a washing machine.

Fig. 6. Schematic block diagram of the close loop system of washing machine.

Fig. 7. Schematic block diagram of the closed loop system of the electric lift.

complete, user-friendly design; and pleasant music was played

at the end of each washing stage.
D. Software Development for an Electric Lift
To adjust the speed and direction for the electric lift, the programming for the PWM module is similar to that of the washing
machine. But here two feedback systems are required to indicate
the lift level and to control the speed, respectively. Fig. 7 shows
the feedback systems designed by one group of students. The G
in Fig. 7 was a generator coupled with the motor M to measure
the speed as it delivered a voltage proportional to the speed of
to
the driving motor [7]. The voltage range of

from the generator refers to the maximum speed of the lift in either direction. Since the ADC module in PIC 18F4431 requires
to make a valid conversion, a cira voltage between
cuit using Op-amp 741 was designed to convert the voltage from
, to
[11].
To detect the level of a lift, an optical sensing circuit, including a light-dependent resistor (LDR) and an LED, was designed to indicate every location on the shaft where the lift
stopped [11]. The LED shone directly into the LDR, causing
its resistance to drop to its lowest value. As the lift reached a
level, the light beam was cut, causing the LDRs resistance to increase dramatically. The voltage between the LDRs were measured and sent to the ADC module of the PIC_MCD board. By
detecting the status of the pins of the ADC module, the current
position of the lift was detected.
VII. STUDENT ASSESSMENT
A survey was conducted at the end of the semester. The majority of students (68%) agreed or strongly agreed that they were
satisfied with this subject. Also, 65% of the students thought that
this subject helped them to develop valuable generic attributes
(e.g., research inquiry skills, communication skills, personal intellectual autonomy, etc.). The feedback from students showed

CHU et al.: PROJECT-BASED LAB TEACHING FOR POWER ELECTRONICS AND DRIVES

that the project-based lab teaching was more appealing than routine lab work because it motivated students predominantly to
learn and understand. Most students acknowledged that they understood the PWM control strategy, and became familiar with
motor driving systems, including hardware and software. More
importantly they acquired project management abilities and improved group-working skills.
However, there were some comments on prerequisite subjects. Some (12%) of the students considered that prior learning
did not adequately prepare them for this subject. Half of the students enrolled in the subject were from Mechatronics, and had
been exposed to PIC microcontrollers; whereas the other half
were from Electrical Engineering, and had not. This situation
posed some difficulties, which will be addressed next year by
adding a lecture and tutorial on the PIC 18F4431. Moreover, to
balance the relative workload demands between hardware and
software involved in the project, the hardware work will be made
more demanding, and the software work will be simplified in
order to be fair for all the students enrolled in this subject.

VIII. CONCLUSION
This paper presents an example of applying project-based lab
teaching in a Power Electronic and Drives course, and demonstrates that this approach can be applied safely to this subject
area so as to make a power electronic lab more appealing to
students.
The paper describes the details of the project, including
the organization, hardware and software, and assessment. The
project meets the syllabus requirements for this subject and is
safe for students to implement in a laboratory environment.
Student understanding of motor drive systems was improved,
as were student skills in practical work, software development,
teamwork, and project management. The project defined basic
specifications for students to achieve, and also gave them
freedom to design additional features. Students gained the
abilities to deal with real-life practical problems, and to apply
their knowledge to solve realistic problems. Students found
developing a relatively complicated engineering product to be
a highly positive learning experience.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank T. Wood for preparing the
PIC_MCD board and MCD bootloader for this project, and
R. Sutton and Prof. G. Lucas for reviewing the manuscript.
The authors also appreciate the constructive comments of the
reviewers.

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Rui Hong Chu received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering
from Xian Jiao Tong University, China and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and information engineering from the University of Sydney, Australia, in 1989, 1992,
and 2004, respectively.
From 1992 to 1998, she was an Electrical Engineer at the Northwest Electric Power Research and Test Institute, Xian, China. She was with EnergyAustralia, Sydney, in 2003 until joining the School of Electrical and Information
Engineering, University of Sydney, in 2004.

Dylan Dah-Chuan Lu (S00M01) received the B.Eng.(Hons.) and Ph.D. degrees in electronic and information engineering from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong, in 1999 and 2004, respectively.
In 2003, he joined PowerLab Limited, a spin-off company at The University
of Hong Kong, as a Senior Engineer. Currently, he is a Lecturer at the School
of Electrical and Information Engineering, The University of Sydney, Australia.
His research interests include modeling, synthesis and computer-aided design
of power converters, dc-dc converters for VRM applications, electronic ballast, controls, power-factor-correction circuits, soft-switching techniques, and
renewable electrical energy systems.

S. Sathiakumar (S82M85SM04) received the B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore,
India.
His industrial experience includes working at the English Electric Company
of India Ltd., and the Indian Institute of Science before becoming Lecturer at the
University of Newcastle, Australia, until 1991. Currently, he is a Senior Lecturer
at the University of Sydney, Australia. His fields of interest are adaptive control
of electric machines, application of microprocessors and power converters for
real-time control, harmonic pollutionless PWM switching techniques for power
conversion, and renewable energy resources.