Design of an automatic test adapter for AC power testing of multi-voltage switching power supplies

The main goal of this thesis is the realization of a an automatic test adapter for AC power testing of multi-voltage switching power supplies. The entire project has been carried out at SPEA Spa (TO) - an automatic test equipment company leader in the market - which helped me throughout the design of the fixture and the test program, giving me precious insights and a valuable testing technical knowledge. The whole document is divided into sections, starting from an introduction necessary to offer a theoretical background and proceeding with the blueprint of the adapter, covering its electrical design and the test program development. Many concepts about Power Electronics, Measurement and Signal Theory are revised throughout all the first chapter, allowing a clean understanding of those topics, essential to comprehend the decisions taken within the project. The draft of the hardware and software parts of the adapter has been held by means of the company specialized tools and are explained in details, motivating how the choices have been made and illustrating the sketched schematics (HW) and code segments (SW) used to support the complete test of the power supply under analysis. The purpose of this work is to provide an application case study, suited for high power test of electronics products, while delving all the practical expertise needed to realize how important this field of electronics is. Verifying the correct working of power devices is extremely important due to their various delicate usages, just thinking about a power supply booting a medical instruments or an airplane control board gives the amount of the relevance of such testing needs. Testing nowadays has become a huge player inside electronics product outlines and manufacturing phases; it is simply foolish to think otherwise because the higher the complexity of a device goes, the easier are the chances for it to be faulty. In this field, it is paramount to asses any possible faults before they turn into failure, which can then transform in dangerous situations, depending on the functionality of the product to be tested. SPEA - with its experience of over 40 years in its sector - is ensuring excellent level of fault detection and test coverage all over its applications, guaranteeing remarkable level of dependability for their ATE delivered products, making the industrial electronics reliable and safe to operate.