Advanced high power DC-DC converter using a novel type voltage source full-bridge soft switching PWM inverter with high frequency transformer link for arc welding applications

This paper presents a new circuit topology of full-bridge soft-switching PWM inverter linked DC-DC power converter composed of conventional full-bridge high frequency PWM inverter with high frequency transformer and an active quasi-resonant snubber consisting of an additional power switching device in series with DC busline and a loss-less capacitor in parallel with DC busline. Under this proposed high frequency soft-switching PWM inverter linked DC-DC converter, four power switches in the full-bridge arms and DC busline series switch can achieve ZVS at turn-off commutation. By developing the advanced soft-switching PWM high frequency inverter type DC-DC converter, although the conduction power loss of DC busline series power switch increases a little, the total turn-off switching loss of full-bridge high frequency inverter power modules can be sufficiently lowered more and more in the higher frequency range of 60kHz. As a result, when the switching frequency of high frequency inverter power stage using IGBT power modules is designed so as to be more than about 10 kHz, the more the switching frequency of inverter increases, the more this high frequency soft-switching DC-DC converter has remarkable advantage as for the power conversion efficiency as compared with the conventional hard-switching PWM inverter DC-DC converter. Its practical effectiveness of high power density and high performance is actually proved for TIG arc welding equipment in industry.