Interactive simulation
Buck converter simulation
Switch, coil and diode making 12 V into 5 V — watch the ripple and the CCM edge.
As long as the inductor current never reaches zero the output is simply D × Vin: the switch chops Vin, L and C average it. Drop the load (or L, or fsw) until the orange current touches zero and the converter falls into DCM — the ripple is then bigger than the load itself and Vout climbs above D × Vin. ΔVout is the charge the inductor pushes into the cap above the load line, which in CCM is exactly ΔIL / (8·fsw·Cout) with Cout fixed at 100 µF.
What you can change
- Vin
- L
- fsw
