Single-Phase Improved Active Clamp Coupled-Inductor-Based Converter With Extended Voltage Doubler Cell

Abstract

In this paper, A single-phase improved active clamp coupled-inductor-based converter with extended voltage doubler cell is proposed for large-voltage conversion ratio applications. The secondary winding of the coupled inductor is inserted into the half-wave voltage doubler cell to extend the voltage gain dramatically and decrease the switch voltage stress effectively. By combining the coupled inductor and voltage doubler cell structure, the disadvantage of the potential resonance between the leakage inductance and the diode stray capacitor is cancelled, and the unexpected high pulsed current in the voltage doubler cell is decreased due to the inherent leakage inductance of the coupled inductor. Meanwhile, the active clamp scheme is employed to recycle the leakage energy, suppress the switch turn-off voltage spikes, and implement zero-voltage-switching turn-on operation. In addition, there is only one magnetic component in the proposed converter and the coupled inductor operates not only as a filter inductor, but also as a transformer when the main switch is in the ON state, which reduces the volume of the magnetic core and improves the power density of the converter. A 500 W prototype operating at 100 kHz with 48 V input and 380 V output is built to verify the analysis. The maximum efficiency of the prototype is nearly 97% and the efficiency is higher than 96% over a wide load range.