Amir Hashemi

Amir has been studying and working in the field of power electronics for over 15 years. He received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Power Electronics in Iran (Tafresh University and Isfahan University of Technology) before he spent a few years working as a Power Electronics Engineer and gaining industry experience.

In 2018, Amir moved to Canada to work as a Research Assistant at the University of Calgary until he started his Ph.D. path at the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science of Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.

“I have been using PSIM for the simulation of wireless chargers for electric vehicle applications. I am working on both power circuits including switching elements, compensation network, and transmitting coils as well as digital control systems.

I have used PSIM for more than 10 years since I started my MSc program.

In most cases, PSIM has a simple as well as an advanced model for an electrical element, therefore you always have options to make a trade-off between accuracy and simulation speed. I always choose simple models for the early stage of my simulation for fast kicking-off and for the final version I always use an advanced model for the best accuracy and to ensure that every aspect of the circuit including non-linearities and parasitic elements are well taken care of.

PSIM has many blocks for simulating power circuits as well as control systems. A wide range of electrical machines, transformers, power electronics elements, magnetic circuit elements, and mechanical parts make PSIM a very powerful and multipurpose software for many applications. When it comes to control systems, PSIM provides many analog and digital blocks for ease of implementing almost every type of controller ranging from a simple PI controller to nonlinear adaptive observer-based controllers. PSIM also has some blocks which make it possible to implement some parts of the system by using programming codes. It comes in very handy sometimes and saves a lot of time for fast prototyping.

I also like the script language that PSIM supports to have control over different simulations. In other words, you can change the simulation parameters and run it again and again and finally merge the results to get what you want automatically. Another aspect I love about PSIM is that the parameter sweep function, utilizes all the cores/threads in your CPU and it extremely shrinks down the time you need to spend to tune parameters.

Finally, I also used to run the PSIM simulation through the operating system command-line which makes it possible to connect PSIM to any other software running on your computer which is very useful especially when you want to optimize a circuit.

In terms of simulation speed, PSIM is the fastest ever simulating software by far. There is no other software with this level of capabilities and functionalities that runs as fast as PSIM.

It is also super user-friendly and handy. Even a new user can find elements very quickly by looking in the menus or using the search box. In many cases, PSIM looks very simple without any unnecessary complexity, which is very attractive for the new user but on the other hand, PSIM usually brings the complexity of some features in a special place for the expert users, therefore both users can use the software based on their needs and expectations.

PSIM help is very useful, the example bank is very rich and there are many videos and webinars available online for those who look for tutorial materials. I never felt I could not figure out how to use something in the software because all these resources as well as the responsive PSIM support team could clarify everything for me.

I barely need to ask for help since my PSIM works flawlessly. However, it takes you just a few minutes or hours to receive your comprehensive answer to the questions you ask the PSIM support team.

PSIM has been my first and most trusted choice to start a project rapidly and end it with the highest accuracy while using many functionalities and hustle-free features for my industrial and research purposes.”