Accurate and Efficient Simulation Models for Power Electronics Transformers Based on Series-Connected Active Unity Power Factor Rectifier Modules

Abstract

This paper contributes an efficient simulation technique for input-series output-parallel multilevel power electronics transformers based on active unity-power-factor rectifiers as building blocks. The technical motivation of the work comes from the fact that the computational burden for the simulation of these technologies tends to become unaffordable as the number of modules grows when using commercial software blocksets. This paper presents a new method to drastically reduce the simulation complexity by simplifying the switching rules: in a three-phase circuit, each phase zero-crossing condition is implemented by a single and simple algebraic rule, so the complex calculations for determining the conduction state of each single diode are removed from the model. The computational enhancement and accuracy of the proposed technique are proved by experimental verification using a single-phase single-cell prototype together with multiple simulations of full-scale systems of different sizes.