Modelling of Non–Linear Distortion in Vacuum Triodes Using Trans–Characteristics Inverse and Newton’s Method

Abstract

The increased interest in vacuum tube audio amplifiers led to an increased interest in mathematical modelling of such kind of amplifiers. The main purpose of this paper is to develop a novel global numerical approach in calculation of the harmonic distortion (HD) and intermodulation distortion (IM) of vacuum-triode audio amplifiers, suitable for applications using brute-force of modern computers. Since the 3/2 power law gives only the transcharacteristic inverse of a vacuum triode amplifier, unknown plate currents are determined in this paper iteratively using Newton’s method. Using the resulting input/output pairs, harmonic distortions and intermodulations are calculated using discrete Fourier transform and three different analytical methods.