Three-Phase Interleaved LLC Asymmetric Resonant Converter With Capacitive Current Balancing and Reduced Switch Voltage Stress

• Published in: IEEE access Vol. 8; pp. 5688 - 5698
• Main Authors: Tada, Yoshiya, Uno, Masatoshi, Sato, Yusuke
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 2020; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Active control; Asymmetric resonance; Asymmetry; Balancing; Capacitors; Circuits; Converters; Copper loss; current balancing; Electric potential; Feedback control; flying capacitor; interleaved converter; LLC resonant converter; Magnetic resonance; Passive components; Resonant converters; Stress; Switches; Topology; Transformers; Voltage
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2963281

Interleaved converters are a typical solution to enhance a current capacity and to reduce current ripples of an input or output port. Conventional interleaved LLC resonant converters need additional switches and passive components with a feedback control loop for active current balancing, increasing the circuit complexity and cost. This paper proposes a novel three-phase interleaved LLC resonant converter with an automatic capacitive current balancing capability. Two flying capacitors are added to a conventional interleaved LLC resonant converter in order to realize not only the automatic capacitive current balancing but also the reduced switch voltage stresses and asymmetric resonant operations that contribute to reducing rms currents as well as copper losses of transformers. The detailed operation analysis, including the capacitive current balancing mechanism and gain characteristics derivation, are performed. The experimental verification using a 1-kW prototype demonstrated that the automatic capacitive current balancing could be achieved despite the significant mismatch in transformers' parameters.