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Multiphase Bidirectional Flyback Converter PDF
Multiphase Bidirectional Flyback Converter PDF
1, JANUARY 2009
AbstractFor hybrid electric vehicles, the batteries and the in series. However, if too many batteries are connected in series,
drive dc link may be at different voltages. The batteries are at then the volumetric efficiency of the battery comes down.
low voltage to obtain higher volumetric efficiencies, and the dc Therefore, there is a need for a bidirectional converter which
link is at higher voltage to have higher efficiency on the motor
side. Therefore, a power interface between the batteries and the interfaces the low-voltage battery with a high-voltage dc bus
drives dc link is essential. This power interface should handle and maintains a bidirectional power flow. Reference [2] shows
power flow from battery to motor, motor to battery, external the use of a bidirectional converter for a permanent-magnet ac-
genset to battery, and grid to battery. This paper proposes a motor-driven electric vehicle. Reference [3] shows the use of
multi-power-port topology which is capable of handling multiple a cascaded bidirectional buckboost converter for the use in
power sources and still maintains simplicity and features like
obtaining high gain, wide load variations, lower output-current dc-motor-driven electric vehicle. Both schemes emphasize the
ripple, and capability of parallel-battery energy due to the mod- importance of bidirectional dcdc converter for electric vehicle
ular structure. The scheme incorporates a transformer winding application. The dcdc converters can be divided into hard-
technique which drastically reduces the leakage inductance of the switching converters and soft-switching converters. Because
coupled inductor. The development and testing of a bidirectional of the low efficiency of hard-switching converters, recently,
flyback dcdc converter for hybrid electric vehicle is described in
this paper. Simple hysteresis voltage control is used for dc-link soft-switching techniques are getting popular. Reference [4]
voltage regulation. The experimental results are presented to show proposes ZVS techniques for different nonisolated dcdc con-
the working of the proposed converter. verters. There is a limit on the voltage gain that can be achieved
Index TermsBidirectional flyback converter, hybrid electric using a buckboost or a boost converter. It is not desirable to
vehicle, leakage inductance. operate the boost or the buckboost converter at very high duty
ratio because of very high capacitor current ripple. Thus, the
solution is to go for isolated topologies for getting the high
I. I NTRODUCTION
voltage gain in between the battery and the dc bus. In such
Fig. 3. (a) Switching pulses during forward power flow. (b) Switching pulses
during reverse power flow. (c) Ideal switch voltage and current waveforms
during forward power flow for phase A assuming continuous conduction.
(d) Ideal switch voltage and current waveforms during reverse power flow for
phase A assuming continuous conduction.
CCM. DCM and CRM are not considered for circuit design
because there is no stringent voltage regulation requirement for
the MPP output. The regulation is handled by the downstream Fig. 4. (a) Block diagram of the control scheme used. (b) Dynamic response
inverter. of the dc-link voltage after the sudden application of powering and regenerative
loads.
A. Coupled-Inductor Design
In hard-switched flyback converter, the energy stored in the
leakage inductance of the coupled inductor gets dissipated
Fig. 6. (a) Building up the capacitor voltage without soft start. (b) Building
through the parasitic of the switch. Because of this, a high- up the capacitor voltage with soft start.
frequency ringing is observed at the switching edge. The peak
amplitude of the ringing voltage can be very high, depending on
the energy stored in the leakage inductance. For an application when the turns ratio between the primary and the secondary
like electric vehicle, the current is considerably high. This is 1 : 2. All the layers are parallel to each other.
means that the energy stored in the leakage inductance is also
considerably high. Thus, it may result in a very high voltage
B. Soft Start
spike which may damage the switch. One option to reduce this
spike is by using a passive snubber circuit. A passive snubber One more important aspect to be taken care of in the imple-
protects the device but results in high power loss. To eliminate mentation is building the capacitor voltage. It is to be noted
this power loss, active snubber circuits can be used at the cost that there is no current controller. Therefore, because of the
of extra components. However, the strategy followed in the second-order-type response, there can be high initial current
proposed scheme is to reduce the leakage inductance itself. during the building up of capacitor voltage. This high current is
First, the transformer is designed, and cross-sectional areas dangerous for the semiconductor switches, and it can saturate
of the primary and secondary windings are found out. Let the the core of the coupled inductor also. This problem is taken
designed value of the cross section of the primary be A1 and care of by the soft-start strategy. The converter is operated
that of the secondary be A2. Now, let a wire of a single cross- at fixed duty cycle of 75%. However, at the start, the duty
sectional area A3 be chosen for winding the transformer. If cycle is linearly increased from 0% to 75%. Because of this,
A3 is much less than A1 and A2 and if A1/A3 = n1 and there is no significant overshoot of current. This phenomenon
A2/A3 = n2, then the primary will comprise n1 parallel wires, is verified using simulation, and the simulation result is shown
and the secondary will comprise n2 parallel wires of cross- in Fig. 6. Fig. 6(a) shows the dc bus voltage and the primary
sectional area A3. If n1/n2 = 2, then, after winding two wires current when the primary switch is pulsed with 75% duty
of the primary, one wire of the secondary is wound, and it cycle at the start. Thus, heavy current overshoot is observed.
is continued until all the parallel wires are wound. Using this Fig. 6(b) shows the dc voltage and current waveform when
technique, extensive reduction in the leakage inductance was the dc-link voltage is built up using soft start, i.e., duty cycle
achievable. Leakage inductance dropped to less than 0.1% of is slowly increased from 0% to 75% in a linear fashion. The
the inductance of the coupled inductor. The winding patterns simulation result shows that overshoot in the primary current is
of the primary and secondary windings are shown in Fig. 5 very less.
82 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 56, NO. 1, JANUARY 2009
Fig. 10. Converter output voltage during soft starting and resistive loading of
Fig. 8. Secondary-diode voltage of the two adjacent phases of the four-phase the converter (scale: x-axis: 5 s/div; y-axis: 100 V/div).
flyback converter during forward-power-flow operation.
shows the secondary diode voltage of two different phases dur-
V. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
ing the same mode of operation. Fig. 9 shows the primary diode
A prototype of the proposed bidirectional converter is made and secondary switch voltages and currents during charging
and experimentally verified. This converter is tested for both the battery from the mains. It can be noted that the current
forward and reverse power flows. For forward power flow, the directions are negative. This means that the current is flowing
converter is tested with a resistive load and for reverse power from the capacitor to the battery. Figs. 7 and 8 are similar
flow, the dc-link capacitor of this converter is charged from to the waveforms shown in Fig. 3(a) and (c) because both of
mains using a diode rectifier. The output capacitor voltage dur- them are in CCM. Whereas for reverse power flow, Fig. 9 is
ing reverse-power-flow mode is maintained higher compared not similar to Fig. 3(b) and (d) because the experimental result
with that during forward-power-flow mode, which is evident of Fig. 9 is in DCM and the simulation results of Fig. 3(b)
from Fig. 4(b). The reason for maintaining the voltage high and (d) are in CCM. Fig. 10 shows the dynamic response
during reverse power flow is that, during charging, there is an of the converter during forward-power-transfer mode. Initial
increase in the terminal voltage of the battery, and because the portion of the response shows the soft starting of the dc-link
duty cycle of operation is fixed, and if the voltage is less, then voltage. After that, because of no-load operation, the output
the charging rate will be less. Fig. 7 describes the operation voltage oscillates between the hysteresis band. Then, after
of the system during forward power flow. It shows the switch the converter is loaded, the dc-link voltage comes out of the
voltages and the switch currents of a single leg. It can be seen hysteresis band and falls to a lesser value which is the effect
that even without using a snubber, the voltage overshoot at of constant duty cycle of operation. However, the controller
the switching edges is very less. This explains the advantage for the traction inverter compensates for this dc-link voltage
of the transformer winding technique followed here. Fig. 8 variation.
BHATTACHARYA et al.: FLYBACK CONVERTER TOPOLOGY FOR HYBRID ELECTRIC VEHICLES 83
A PPENDIX
This section provides the following specifications of the
prototype converter which was built: V. Shriganesh Giri received the B.Tech. degree from
the College of Engineering, Trivandrum, India, in
2004, and the M.Tech. degree from the Indian Insti-
1) nominal battery voltage: 60 V; tute of Science, Bangalore, India, in 2006.
2) nominal output voltage: 330 V; He is currently with NVIDIA, Bangalore. His
3) switching frequency: 20 kHz; research interests include analog and digital circuit
design, hybrid electric vehicles, etc.
4) turns ratio: 63/31;
5) nominal power: 6 kW;
6) IGBT part number: SKM50GB123D.
84 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 56, NO. 1, JANUARY 2009
K. Mathew received the B.E. degree in electronics L. Umanand received the B.S. degree in electron-
and communication engineering from the KVG Col- ics and communications from Bangalore University,
lege of Engineering, Sullia, India, in 1994, and the Bangalore, India, in 1987, and the M.Tech degree
M.Tech degree from the Indian Institute of Science, in electronics design and the Ph.D. degree from
Bangalore, India, in 2006. the Centre for Electronics Design and Technol-
He is currently a Lecturer in electronics and ogy (CEDT), Indian Institute of Science (IISc),
communication engineering with Mahatma Gandhi Bangalore, in 1989 and 1996, respectively. His
University, Kerala, India. His research interests in- Ph.D. thesis was in the area of control for high-
clude embedded systems, power electronics, and performance induction motors drives.
electromechanical systems. He is currently a Principal Research Scientist with
CEDT, IISc. His major research interests include
photovoltaic system design, bond graph modeling of power electronic systems,
high-performance control of induction motors, designing for reliability, and
hybrid electric vehicles.