High efficiency design procedure of a second stage phase shifted full bridge converter for battery charge applications based on wide output voltage and load ranges

Abstract

This work presents a high efficiency phase shifted full bridge (PSFB) DC-DC converter for use in the second stage of a battery charger for neighborhood electrical vehicle (EV) applications. In the design of the converter, Lithium-ion battery cells are preferred due to their high voltage and current rates, which provide a high power density. This requires wide range output voltage regulation for PSFB converter operation. In addition, the battery charger works with a light load when the battery charge voltage reaches its maximum value. The soft switching of the PSFB converter depends on the dead time optimization and load condition. As a result, the converter has to work with soft switching at a wide range output voltage and under light conditions to reach high efficiency. The operation principles of the PSFB converter for the continuous current mode (CCM) and the discontinuous current mode (DCM) are defined. The performance of the PSFB converter is analyzed in detail based on wide range output voltage and load conditions in terms of high efficiency. In order to validate performance analysis, a prototype is built with 42-54 V / 15 A output values at a 200 kHz switching frequency. The measured maximum efficiency values are obtained as 94.4% and 76.6% at full and at 2% load conditions, respectively. © 2018 KIPE.