Active Saturation Mitigation in High-Density Dual-Active-Bridge DC–DC Converter for On-Board EV Charger Applications
Abstract
This article presents a transformer saturation prevention algorithm (SPA) targeting dual-active-bridge (DAB) dc-dc converters utilized in bidirectional, two-stage electric vehicle (EV) on-board battery chargers. Saturation prevention is achieved by detecting the variation in transformer current slope near the boundary of saturation and applying duty-cycle offsets to the DAB converter full bridges. Compared to alternative methods of saturation mitigation, the proposed algorithm offers the following benefits: Lower transformer design safety margins which enable volume reduction with minimal harm to efficiency, and low-cost implementation using a single low-cost current sensor even at high converter switching speeds. Experiments on a custom 6.6-kW on-board EV charger confirm the controller functionality and initial converter analysis. A peak converter efficiency of 96.8% with a transformer volume of 80 cm3is achieved, which is a 50% volume reduction in comparison to other academic works.
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The phase-shifted DAB converter is one of the most popular bidirectional DC/DC converters in the OBC market.
“The phase-shifted DAB converter is one of the most popular bidirectional DC/DC converters in the OBC market [117], [118].”
From A Review of Bidirectional On-Board Chargers for Electric Vehicles (2021) · cites this paper as [118]
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Safayatullah, M., Elrais, M. T., Ghosh, S., Rezaii, R., & Batarseh, I. (2022) · IEEE Access · doi:10.1109/access.2022.3166935 · Cited by 615 · see citing works
A Review of Bidirectional On-Board Chargers for Electric Vehicles
Yuan, J., Dorn-Gomba, L., Callegaro, A. D., Reimers, J., & Emadi, A. (2021) · IEEE Access · doi:10.1109/access.2021.3069448 · Cited by 390 · see citing works
“bidirectional DC/DC converters in the OBC market [117], [118].”
Background
- Authors
- Assadi, S. A., Matsumoto, H., Moshirvaziri, M., Nasr, M., Zaman, M. S., & Trescases, O.
- Affiliations
- University of Toronto (CA)
- Venue
- IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics
- Published
- 2020-04
- Volume
- 35
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 4376-4387
- ISSN
- 0885-8993 (ISSN-L)
- 1941-0107
- OpenAlex
- W2971889244
- Cited by
- 93
- References
- 18
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 27 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 3.06
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Advanced DC-DC Converters
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Wireless Power Transfer Systems
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Multilevel Inverters and Converters
- Keywords
- dual active bridge converter, DC-DC converter, high switching frequency
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