Design and evaluation of a reconfigurable stacked active bridge dc/dc converter for efficient wide load-range operation

This paper presents the design and implementation of a large-step-down soft-switched dc-dc converter based on the active bridge technique which overcomes some of the limitations of the conventional Dual Active Bridge (DAB) converter. The topology comprises a double stacked-bridge inverter coupled to...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Afridi, Khurram K., Abramson, Rose A., Gunter, Samantha Joellyn, Otten, David M, Perreault, David J
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Format: Article
Language:en_US
Published: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 2017
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/112228
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3241-1408
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0704-6349
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0313-8243
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0746-6191
Description
Summary:This paper presents the design and implementation of a large-step-down soft-switched dc-dc converter based on the active bridge technique which overcomes some of the limitations of the conventional Dual Active Bridge (DAB) converter. The topology comprises a double stacked-bridge inverter coupled to a reconfigurable rectifier through a special three-winding leakage transformer. This particular combination of stages enable the converter to run in an additional low-power mode that greatly increases light-load efficiency by reducing core loss and extending the zero-voltage switching (ZVS) range. The converter is implemented with a single compact magnetic component, providing power combining, voltage transformation, isolation, and energy transfer inductance. A 175 kHz, 300 W, 380 V to 12 V GaN-based prototype converter achieves 95.9% efficiency at full load, a peak efficiency of 97.0%, an efficiency above 92.7% down to 10% load and an efficiency above 79.8% down to 3.3% load.