Study and modelling of cold-cathode electric discharge lamps

Abstract

Traditional discharge lamps consist of hot-cathodes that operate at several hundreds of degrees. Cold-cathode lamps have been recently launched as alternative products. This project involves a study of the lamp characteristics and modelling of the lamps including the dimming operation. Experiments were conducted to study the lamp characteristics at varying voltage and fixed frequency and then varying frequency and fixed voltage. The lamp is then operated at low frequency with a magnetic ballast and the proposal is to model the lamp based on physical equations with the aid of genetic algorithm. The genetic algorithm is used to generate 7 optimum values from 6 physical equations, which is expected to give values that can give the lamp voltage and current that agrees with the experimental measured values.