Magnetic integration and a non-interactive FEA-interfaced optimization for hybrid phase modulated converter with current-doubler rectifier

The Hybrid Phase Modulated Converter (HPMC) is a recent innovation in the family of resonant transition power converters. It is a promising solution to most soft switching issues. With current-doubler rectifier, it has several added advantages like improved soft-switching characteristics and reduced total magnetics requirement. The major drawback of HPMC with this rectifier mode is the requirement of four magnetic components. Since magnetic components are the principal determinants of cost and size, and have relatively poor reliability, a scheme to reduce the number of magnetic components is desirable.; The motivation for this work is the absence of a standard procedure for magnetic integration which can be applied to an arbitrary number of components and functions. Magnetic integration has immense potential in several other applications as well, that require multiple magnetic components. For instance; those involving interleaving of either inductors or transformers.; The technique and approach for magnetic integration proposed in this work are very general and can be extended to any number of components and functions. These are applied to integrate four magnetic components of the HPMC with current-doubler on a single core. The number of windings is also reduced from six to four. The scheme is substantiated by lumped-parameter gyrator-capacitor model based simulation results and experimental results from laboratory prototypes rated for 1 kW. The integrated magnetic component(IMC) prototypes used are formed from ferrite material or composite structures. Finite element analysis (FEA) is used for verification of the IMC design. A non-interactive FEA-based interface is developed to optimize the core geometry. Converter efficiency greater than 90 percent is realized for both ferrite and composite constructs. The work concludes with a comparison of copper and core material requirements for discrete and integrated realizations. The proposed magnetic integration for HPMC reduces the magnetic component count, the number of windings and interconnects, and core and copper requirement.