Sir,
I found this circuit in web and calculated node voltage.
My doubt is
1)when i move the p1 pot up to top position my node voltage will be 0.79V , which is enough to turn on my internal current limiting transistor. Then why i need those parallel 0.22ohm (4 nos)?
2)which will be the negative terminal of power supply? either Right end or Left end(where filter capacitor were connected) of current sensing resistors(4x 0.22 ohm resistors). What is the technique employed?
3) what will happen if there is no 4x0.22 ohm resistor?
Thank you
[1] The four 0.22 Ohm resistors in parallel create a resistor of value 0.055 Ohms, which senses current. You need that to sense current.
[2] The output of the power supply is on the right (-) terminal. The input is on the left. The two can not be made into a single common.
[3] With no 0.22 Ohm resistors there is no current sense, hence there will be no current limit at all.
You can analyze this by looking at the voltage divider created by the pot and the associated resistors, along with R5 the current sense resistors.
If you look at all the top side resistors in series and call them RA, and all the bottom side resistors and call them RB, then the voltage at the base of the lower NPN (voltage referenced to the output common terminal) would be:
Vbase=Vref*RB/(RA+RB)
but it is also biased by the voltage across R5 and the output current because the emitter is tied to the input common not the output common. This means the output current affects Vbe of the lower NPN as:
Vbe=Vref*RB/(RA+RB)+Io*R5
where Io is the output current.
Replacing RA and RB with the actual resistors we end up with:
Vbe=(R5*(Io*R6+Io*R2+Io*Rp)+Vref*(R6+Rd))/(R6+R2+Rp)
and here Rp is the total value of the pot (500 Ohms in the schematic) and Rd is the lower resistance part of the pot after adjustment.
With the values substituted in for the variables and setting Vbe=0.7 volts for an approximation, we get current limit as follows.
With the pot set all the way down, the current limit is around 11 amps.
With the pot set all the way up, the theoretical current limit is actually about -1 amps, which is probably not possible, so the output current would probably be zero at that point. If we adjust it slightly down from top, we get a theoretical zero amps output.
Note Vbe may be slightly different than 0.7 volts, and changes with temperature (heating up of the IC chip and ambient temperature).
The main point though is that R5 is definitely needed to sense current or you can not get current limit. If you short it out, no current limit, if you open it up, no output at all except maybe some leakage current. Either of these extremes is not an option that will work.