A Family of Zero-Voltage-Switching Magnetic Coupling Nonisolated Bidirectional DC–DC Converters

Abstract

This paper proposes a family of magnetic coupling nonisolated bidirectional dc-dc converters, which can achieve soft-switching operation in both power flow directions with a simple auxiliary circuit. Compared with conventional zero-voltage-transition converters, the additional resonant inductor is eliminated and magnetic core number is reduced. Therefore, both high efficiency and low cost are achieved. First, a general zero-voltage-switching (ZVS) magnetic coupling structure is proposed for a bidirectional buck/boost converter, based on which 13 different ZVS topologies with different connections of auxiliary circuit are derived. It is very beneficial in practical industrial applications because engineers can choose an optimal one according to converter performance characteristics, and the topology derivation methodology can be easily extended to other bidirectional dc-dc converters. Second, based on the general structure, operation principle and performance characteristics of all proposed topologies are simultaneously obtained, which can facilitate topology comparison and selection processes. Finally, in order to verify the effectiveness of theoretical analysis, design considerations and experiment results of a 500-W prototype circuit are demonstrated.