Saturday, 15 February 2014

How do I design a constant current load circuit?


I'm currently a rising junior in EE and am honestly completely lost... I've been tasked with designing a constant current load circuit to discharge parts of the battery pack for Georgia Tech's solar racing club, but I don't really know where to start. I have basic circuit knowledge, but no real experience.


I've been online and saw how to make the simplest one, where one op amp is connected with a load resistor and therefore can draw current out of whatever I'm discharging, but as for the rest of it, I'm lost. Can anyone explain to me how the complicated constant current load circuits even work? If you could provide an example of one and walk me through it, I'd appreciate it so much.


Thanks.


update: Sorry for not clarifying on so many things, this is my first time asking a question on here. I'm trying to make a constant current load circuit because the team needs a module discharger. The battery pack has 35 modules, so whichever modules discharge too quickly will give us an indication of what parts of the pack have deficiencies in capacity. Each module trips at an under-voltage of 2.5 V and over-volts at 4.2, it usually floats around the upper 3 range though. I'm not too sure about what the mAh capacity for each module is, but I sent a message to my lead asking about it. I do know he wants to discharge each module at 20 Amps using the constant current load circuit though.




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