The voltage and current ripples in the three-level bi-directional converter (TLBC) can be reduced by an interleaving technique that controls a phase difference between the modules of power converter. On the other hand, the inductor current ripple in TLBC is increased due to the circulating current between the modules. In this paper, the effects of two interleaving methods on a two-phase TLBC, Z-type and N-type, are investigated and compared. In particular, capacitor current ripple, and voltage ripple are compared by two interleaving methods verified through Powersim (PSIM) simulation.

High-capacity power-supply systems using a large input voltage typically improve efficiency and can be miniaturized by dividing the input voltage into multiple small voltages, thereby minimizing the stress on the switching element and thus materializing a fast switching function. When a large input voltage is divided into small voltages in series through a DC link capacitor, power is supplied to each converter and the power of each LLC (Inductor-Inductor-Capacitor) converter can be divided and converted. However, such LLC converters, which are configured by the division of the input voltage, have power imbalance due to the parameter variation between active and passive elements of the power board, which results in an increase in the stress and heat of a particular element. As this problem of power balance necessitates a design for securing a power margin and as the heated element increases its volume, the efficiency and reliability of the LLC converter are degenerated. Accordingly, this study attempted to solve the problem of the power imbalance of LLC converters at each level using a coupled shunt inductor and multiple-input transformers sharing magnetic coupling.

With a view to regulate the output voltage with fixed frequency, without using any additional component or complex modulation technique, a topology of a variable duty controlled three-level LLC converter is proposed and an equivalent small signal model for Electric Vehicle (EV) charger applications is deduced in this paper. The steady state equations of each operating region are derived in time domain. Based on an Extended Describing Function (EDF) approach, a small signal equivalent circuit is modeled which includes both frequency and duty controlled terms. The equivalent circuit is further simplified to derive a transfer function of duty control to output voltage. The transfer function is verified through simulation software. Analyzing the transfer function, a voltage controller is designed and implemented with a PI compensator. The simulation results of the proposed control schemes are illustrated and discussed. The topology is compared to a conventional frequency control topology and the merits of the proposed topology are presented.

This paper proposes a newly developed hybrid current-mode control (HCMC) method for phase-shifted full-bridge (PSFB) converters. Generally, PSFB converters have been widely used in various DC-DC power applications owing to their ease of control and low switching losses. However, the transformer can be saturated by volt-second imbalance of the magnetizing inductance. Therefore, a blocking capacitor can be used in series with the transformer, or peak current-mode control methods with slope compensation can be applied, to prevent transformer saturation. However, blocking capacitors increase the material cost and make the power stage bulky. Moreover, the overcompensation by slope compensation methods delays the control response. This paper proposes a hybrid current-mode control (HCMC) for PSFB converters to solve these problems. A blocking capacitor and slope compensation are not required in the proposed HCMC method for PSFB converters. The proposed HCMC method has no transformer saturation and output response delay, and the efficacy of this method has been verified through simulations and experiments.