Study of nonlinear phenomena in switching DC/DC converters

This thesis studies some nonlinear phenomena such as bifurcation and chaos in DC/DC switching converters. Five phases of investigations are described. The first phase reviews the existing tools for analyzing nonlinear systems that are helpful to the investigation of nonlinear phenomena in power electronic circuits. Some of these existing tools are employed to study the nonlinear behaviour of power electronic circuits in the subsequent phases. The second phase focuses on the analysis of bifurcation behaviour of parallel-connected DC/DC converters under a master-slave current sharing scheme. An iterative discrete-time map and its Jacobian are established to predict the onset of period-doubling or Neimark-Sacker bifurcation. Both parallel-connected buck converters and boost converters are studied. The third phase studies an autonomous free-running Cuk converter under a hysteretic current-mode control. Hopf bifurcation is observed, for the first time, in this kind of autonomous power electronic circuits. The method of state-space averaging is employed to predict the occurrence of such bifurcation. Extensive simulations and experiments confirm the predicted results. A typical bifurcation sequence from stable fixed points to chaos, via limit cycles and quasiperiodic orbits, is demonstrated. The fourth phase investigates the possibility of synchronization of two chaotic autonomous free-running Cuk converters. With a particular capacitor voltage as driving signal, synchronization is found possible. Averaged state equations and conditional Lyapunov exponents are used to predict the possibility of synchronization while computer simulations and PSPICE simulations provide the verification. The last phase gives suggestions for future research.