Hi Ian, thanks for the response.
For some reason I chose one of the hardest circuits to simulate: a solid state tesla coil. It's tough to simulate because each "section" relies on another, so it is difficult to simulate the circuit one section at a time like I normally would.
The circuit involves transformers (gate drive transformer, feedback transformer, etc) which seem to always cause convergence issues ("Time step too small) when I run the simulation. I have tried different values for GMIN, RTOL, and all those options in the Simulation settings but still I have no luck. I also placed high value resistors in parallel with capacitors and low value resistors in series with coils, which helped a little bit once but then something else started happening and I ran into even more convergence issues. I have ended up with a "design" that is less like the circuit I will be building in real life and more like a circuit designed just to be simulated.
This SSTC uses an arduino to generate an interrupter signal, which is passed to a UCC27425 dual MOSFET driver with enable. This chip drives the GDT, which then drives two IGBTs. Since the UCC27425 has one inverting and one non-inverting driver, the IGBTs will alternate between each other which is turned on and which is turned off. This causes an oscillation on the primary. The secondary then has a feedback transformer which passes a signal (which is cleaned up by the 7414) back into the 27425 as an input, and the cycle is repeated.
For those who do not have Proteus 8 and want to see the circuit, here is the schematic that I currently have in the simulator:
I included my project file and the hex code for the Arduino in the following ZIP folder.
Again, the main issue I have been having is with convergence, and that is even after applying the simulation settings for better convergence.
Any thoughts of what may be going wrong would be very much appreciated. I've been banging my head for the past couple of days trying to figure this out
Also please note that the UCC27425 is a custom device, and that its child sheet contains the internal schematic.
Regards,
Matt
EDIT: I forgot to mention that I am using a third-party model for the arduino. In order to open my project you will need to
download the model files, and
add them to your library.