A Novel Prototype of Duty Cycle Controlled Soft-Switching Half-Bridge DC-DC Converter with Input DC Rail Active Quasi Resonant Snubbers Assisted by High Frequency Planar Transformer

Abstract

This paper presents a new circuit topology of active edge resonant snubbers assisted half-bridge soft switching PWM inverter type DC-DC high power converter for DC bus feeding power plants. The proposed DC-DC power converter is composed of a typical voltage source-fed half-bridge high frequency PWM inverter with a high frequency planar transformer link in addition to input DC busline side power semiconductor switching devices for PWM control scheme and parallel capacitive lossless snubbers. The operating principle of the new DC-DC converter treated here is described by using switching mode equivalent circuits, together with its unique features. All the active power switches in the half-bridge arms and input DC buslines can achieve ZCS turn-on and ZVS turn-off commutation transitions. The total turn-off switching losses of the power switches can be significantly reduced. As a result, a high switching frequency IGBTs can be actually selected in the frequency range of 60 kHz under the principle of soft switching. The performance evaluations of the experimental setup are illustrated practically. The effectiveness of this new converter topology is proved for such low voltage and large current DC-DC power supplies as DC bus feeding from a practical point of view.