A new soft switching technique for bi-directional power flow, full-bridge DC-DC converter

This paper proposes a new soft switching technique for the phase-shift controlled bi-directional DC-DC converter. The described converter employs a low profile high frequency transformer and two active full-bridge converters for bidirectional power flow capability. A new soft switching technique is proposed, which guarantees soft switching over wide range (no load to full load) without any additional circuit components. In the proposed switching scheme, the switch pairs in the diagonal position of the converter each are turned on/off simultaneously by the switching signals with a variable duty ratio depending on the phase shift amount, and the converter is operated without freewheeling interval. The load range for soft switching is analyzed mathematically and verified by experiments.