spice/simulink for arc lamp (ignition) simulation feasible?

[Mathias]

Dear ng,

[first thanks for help on my earlier questions (Steve and Bill!), I'll
answer next week to some suggestions when I had time to work on them!]

I'm working on a power supply for an arc lamp but since my intuition
about electronics is sometimes rather limited and there's some high
voltage needed to ignite these lamps, I'd like to simulate some designs
with spice first(or maybe simulink).
But it's been a few years since I used spice. It was great for the IC
simulations at the uni, but I wonder if it's usefull to simulate the
ignition of an arc lamp. I guess it's very hard to model the arc lamp
itself (unless someone already did it), but maybe it's not or someone
has an idea if it is possible with a few days of work?

Thanks,
Mathias

 

[[email protected]]

Dear ng,

[first thanks for help on my earlier questions (Steve and Bill!), I'll
answer next week to some suggestions when I had time to work on them!]

I'm working on a power supply for an arc lamp but since my intuition
about electronics is sometimes rather limited and there's some high
voltage needed to ignite these lamps, I'd like to simulate some designs
with spice first(or maybe simulink).
But it's been a few years since I used spice. It was great for the IC
simulations at the uni, but I wonder if it's usefull to simulate the
ignition of an arc lamp. I guess it's very hard to model the arc lamp
itself (unless someone already did it), but maybe it's not or someone
has an idea if it is possible with a few days of work?

An arc lamp is basically (leaving a lot of "detail" out) just a
resistor with a great big negative kink in its slope. Do you have a
model for say a tunnel diode that you could tweak?


Mark L. Fergerson

 

[Mathias]

[...]

An arc lamp is basically (leaving a lot of "detail" out) just a
resistor with a great big negative kink in its slope. Do you have a
model for say a tunnel diode that you could tweak?


Mark L. Fergerson

The tunnel diode is probably a good start, thanks for the idea.
I found a paper on modelling a different kind of arc lamp with spice
here: http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/399841.html

Reading that I get a pretty good understanding of the complexity of my
endeavor... I think I'll start with the diode

Thanks,
Mathias


PS: Should someone know about other existing models of arc lamps in
spice/pspice I'd still be interested.