1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a current-source sine wave voltage driving circuit using voltage-clamping and soft-switching techniques, more particularly it relates to a current-source sine wave voltage driving circuit using voltage-clamping and soft-switching techniques, which converts a DC source to an AC sine wave voltage using the difference between the AC sine wave voltage command and the feedback voltage to control the turn-on time of switches, and using an inductor to generate a current source to charge capacitors via positive/negative cycles of full-bridge switch to adjust a rise and fall range of voltage to provide linear voltage regulation.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Presently there are two kinds of products which can convert a DC source to 60 Hz AC voltage: one is inverter of AC motor, which uses coil inductor of motor and PWM (pulse width modulation) technique to generate sine-wave-like current, however, it is not suitable for resistive or capacitive loads, therefore basically inverter is not for home appliances or computer products; the other is a modification of the first, such as UPS (Un-interruptible Power Supply), which adds an LC filter circuit at the output and a feedback circuit to provide constant voltage, regardless of various loads and input voltages. Besides, batteries and charging/discharging circuits are often included to provide a back-up power source in addition to the utility power. Taiwan has become a leader in UPS products and related techniques, nevertheless, there are a few issues that still need to be solved.
Firstly, output current has to pass through a filter inductor, and in consideration of the −3 dB response of second order resonance circuit, common UPS has an mH-level of inductance, therefore the filter inductor increases the product's weight and energy transfer loss.
Secondly, the voltage L·di/dt between the two ends of inductor is the difference between the DC voltage and the output voltage. While the minimum value occurs around the sine wave peak, the output waveform tends to distort around the peak turning point and generates high-frequency harmonic components due to the filter inductor. This is inevitable even with higher filter voltage and even though the inductor is intended for filter use it also limits the regulation ability under loads that are suddenly varied.
Thirdly, a few kinds of loads, such as half-wave rectifying loads or highly inductive loads, could harm the driving circuit due to the symmetry of the LC filter circuit waveform, and highly inductive loads could change the frequency response of second order filter circuit as well. DC voltage levels have to be raised in case the output sine wave voltage is too low, and consequently the system could be damaged due to overly high voltage.
Fourthly, the voltage distortion rate of non-resistive loads, generally referred to as Total Harmonic Distortion (THD), is far greater than resistive loads because the traditional second order filter circuit is not capable of handling non-resistive loads, such as inductive, capacitive and nonlinear loads.
Besides, switching loss increases as switching frequency rises, which in turn decreases the system efficiency, many manufacturers started to apply various soft-switching techniques to high power switches, several papers prove that decreases the PWM switching loss will help to increase switching frequency and improve output voltage waveform.
Compared to traditional PWM methods, the sine wave voltage of the current source inverter is mostly used for charging the capacitor to accumulate sine wave voltage under various loads and frequency changes. However, due to the large inductor used in current source, it's hard to control the inductor circuit and to realize soft-switching techniques, resonant voltage and high current issues are difficult to overcome. Recently the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) proposed a voltage-clamping technique to handle current source inverter [1] (please refer to the appendix), the circuit exhibited soft-switching characteristics, which also restrains the switch voltage under the factor of 4. Nevertheless, if the imaginary part of the inductor current in the current source is too high, it's difficult to decrease the volume. Besides, issues such as high ripples in the voltage waveform, no field experiment available and the driving object being an inductance motor still exist.
Therefore, the above-mentioned devices present several shortcomings to be overcome.
In view of the above-described deficiencies of prior-art devices, and after years of constant effort in research, the inventor of this invention has consequently developed and proposed a current-source sine wave voltage driving circuit using voltage-clamping and soft-switching techniques.
The object of the present invention is to provide a current-source sine wave voltage driving circuit, which uses voltage-clamping and soft-switching techniques to use voltage-clamping technique and quasi-resonant property, and to control the inductance current in discontinuous conduction mode so that all semiconductor switches and diodes have the soft-switching characteristics and so that the maximum convention efficiency is more than 95%.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a current-source sine wave voltage driving circuit, which uses a voltage-clamping technique to reduce the voltage specification to be sustained by the switch devices.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a current-source sine wave voltage driving circuit using voltage-clamping and soft-switching techniques, which can do without output filter inductors and can charge the output loads and filter capacitors directly, making it suitable for various inductive, capacitive and nonlinear loads, even loads that change abruptly, and the analysis results of Fourier spectrum and voltage distortion are superior to the traditional PWM scheme.
The current-source sine wave voltage driving circuit using voltage-clamping and soft-switching techniques, such as:
1. voltage-clamping: using the conservation of magnetic flux in the transformer to force the system to operate in a designated voltage range, therefore voltage specification to be sustained by the components, and the components, cost will be reduced.
2. quasi-resonant property: using the continuous voltage property of the LC resonance circuit to enable ZVS (Zero Voltage Switching) effects for all switches and diodes.
3. controlling the inductance current in discontinuous conduction mode: to let the inductor current rise from 0 to turn on the switches and diodes at zero current (Zero Current Switching, ZCS).
These features and advantages of the present invention will be fully understood and appreciated from the following detailed description of the accompanying Drawings.
There are four purposes to the clamping circuit 103: First, it is cascaded with the inverter circuit to control switches T1, T2 to turn on/off the inverter current. Second, capacitor Co and diodes D1, D2 all connect either sides of T1 and T2 to enable ZVS property of T1 and T2 when they cut off. Third, when the primary side of the transformer is forward-biased (the polarity of the black spots in
Detailed descriptions are as follows:
1. Mode 1: time t1˜t2
As shown in mode 1 of
−Lf·di/dt=VIN (1)
After doing integration of the above equation, the time needed for the feedback current of the secondary side of transformer to be cut off is:
tf=Lfif max/VIN (2)
When time tf is very small the current in the transformer reduces to zero quickly and no current flows in coil, i.e., there is no loss in the transformer, therefore the overall system efficiency is improved. When time td>tf, it is for sure that the magnetic flux in the transformer is zero, so it's necessary to estimate the maximum charging current of the output capacitor. Secondly, it is viable to limit the maximum switching frequency for switches, suppose the switching cycle to be:
T=td+ton+ts+toff (3)
wherein ton is the turn-on time for switches T1, T2 of voltage-clamping circuit; ts is the cut-off delay time for T1, T2 in cut-off state and Ta+, Tb− still in turn-on state; toff is the time that output voltage is bigger than command voltage, and all six switches cut off. For td and ts are predefined value of the circuit, and ton, toff depend on the loads and waveform, therefore the maximum value of switching frequency is:
fs(max)<1/(td+ts) (4)
2. Mode 2: time t2˜t3
As shown in mode 2 of
VIN=Ld·di/dt−vc+vo (5)
Meanwhile the initial voltage of capacitor Co will force diode D1 and D2 to be reversely-biased and cut off, so switches T1 and T2 cascading with above-mentioned voltage storage component are turning on; the initial voltage of capacitor Co comes from the cut-off energy drained in Mode 4. From equation (5), it is known that increasing the climbing rate of initial inductor current, making it similar to inductor current in continuous mode, will reduce turn-on time and peak current value. The capacitor voltage is represented by:
3. Mode 3: time t3˜t4
According to Kirchhoff's Voltage Law, the end to end voltage of switches of clamping circuit should be:
therefore the end to end voltage of diodes D1, D2 are
When switches T1, T2 turn on, the end to end voltage will reduce to saturated voltage, and when capacitor Co discharges to near 0 volt, the end to end voltage of diodes D1, D2 will move from reverse-bias to 0 volt then forward-bias, resulting in ZVS turn on state for diodes. The current id on the primary side will split into two parallel paths: T1-D1 and D1-T1 respectively, to charge the capacitor CL, at this time the voltage of VC0 is low:
VC
4. Mode 4: time t4˜t5
When the output feedback voltage is higher than command voltage, T1 and T2 trigger signals cut off, current flow turns to D2, Co and D1, and the voltage VC
VL
While VL
5. Mode 5: time t5˜t6
When the feedback current begins to drop the inductor current id of primary side will all be transferred to secondary coil. At the same time, the current of the full-bridge switches is also zero, and the switch voltage is zero owing that cascading clamping circuit absorbs the voltage difference. The same can apply to cascaded Da+, Db− pair, they both have ZCS and ZVS properties in cut off state. The voltage specification should conform to the condition that output voltage is reversely switching, therefore it is lower than the input DC voltage. The period between t4˜t6 is the crossover time for the primary and secondary side, which is referred to as cut-off delay time. At time t6, the current on the primary side is zero and all switch signals may be shut down.
6. Mode 6: time t6˜t7
Time t7 defines the beginning of the next cycle (v′o=vcom) which means the output capacitor continuously discharges to power the loads, and the inductor feedback current continuously drops, besides, the length of time depends on the loads. In order to release the current until no magnetic flux is in the inductor and the current is in discontinuous mode for all switches turning on with ZCS characteristics, it is necessary to increase the turn-on delay time in mode 1. When feedback current if=0, the end to end voltage of Df equals the disorderly resonance voltage of capacitor and inductor, with the resonance voltage starting from zero, and the diode Df have both ZCS and ZVS properties in cut-off state. As to the switches Ta+, Tb− and matched cascading diodes Da+, Db− waiting to be turned on in the next stage, end to end voltages remain zero. From the analysis of mode 2, when they turn on, they all have ZCS and ZVS properties at the same time.
From above, when most diodes and switches cut off or turn on, they can keep the ZCS and ZVS properties at the same time, and the rest can provide at least one of zero-voltage or zero-current switching properties. Therefore, theoretically, the driving circuit disclosed in the present invention provides high transfer efficiency.
The table depicted below lists all soft-switching capabilities for all modes:
VIN=170V DC
vo=110Vr.m.s60 Hz
Switch: MOSFET IRFP360-400V
Inverter circuit diode: Schottky MBR20200CT-200V
Clamping circuit diode: SFI606G-400V
Tr: EE-55 Ld=Lf=300 uH
Co=0.047 uF
CL=20 uF
Switching frequencies: 5 kHz˜20 kHz
In feedback control circuit 402, vcom is a 1.56 sin(2*π*60t) signal command. The feedback signal v′o is 1/100of output AC voltage vo. In one embodiment, the output peak AC voltage is 156V, and the effective value is 110V. The two signals pass through a low-pass filter circuit to reach a comparator. The comparator outputs a resultant signal to phase splitting circuit 403, and the resultant signal is split to two sets of signals having a phase difference of 180 degrees. Each set of signals pass through two cascaded resistor-diode circuits, which form one stage RC discharging circuits with a same capacitor respectively to provide rise and fall delays to two sets of signals, and further provide turn-on (20 μs) and cut-off time (5 μs) delays via the inverter; meanwhile providing a lockout time (15 μs) needed for an upper path and a lower path of inverter switches to interlock each other. In order to deal with zero crossover voltage swing in a low load situation, the signal coming from Y1 or Y2 point passing through a circuit comprising two cascaded diodes and one capacitor to extend a turn-on time of another set of signals. Six sets of isolating and current amplification driving circuits 404 drive six independent switches to avoid a common-ground short-circuit phenomenon. The phase splitting circuit 403 connecting inverter uses Low Active optical coupling to isolate and amplify the output current to drive. Because any set of switches in inverter are in turn-on state, T1, T2 should turn on accordingly. The only difference among switches is the turn-on delay time. No cut-off delay time exists. The logic control circuit 405 process X1, Y1 and X2, Y2 with AND gate operation respectively to obtain the designated signals, later using OR gate operation to turn on any set of inverter signals. The connecting circuit isolates and amplifies the current driving circuits 404 via a phase-inverting device to drive in low voltage level.
Compared with traditional devices, the present invention provides a current-source sine wave voltage driving circuit using voltage-clamping and soft-switching techniques, which is advantageous in the following ways:
1.The present invention uses voltage-clamping technique and quasi-resonant property, and controls the inductance current in discontinuous conduction mode so that all semiconductor switches and diodes have the soft-switching characteristics and the maximum convention efficiency is more than 95%.
2. The clamping circuit used in the present invention is able to reduce the voltage specification to be sustained by switches, wherein the rated voltage for switches of clamping circuit drops from 4 times to 2 times the input source voltage, and rated voltage for inverter switches drops from 2 times to the same as input voltage.
3. The value and volume of the inductor used in the current source is smaller than those in the prior-art current-source mechanisms so that the current source can adjust inductive current promptly to satisfy the requirements of supplied loads. In one embodiment, we use EE-55 iron powder core having an inductance value of 300 uHo
4. The present invention skips output filter inductor, and the current source charges the output load and filter capacitor directly. Therefore, it is suitable for various inductive, capacitive and nonlinear loads, even for instant load changes, and has better results of Fourier spectrum and output voltage waveform distortion (THD) compared to a traditional PWM scheme.
Many changes and modifications in the above-described embodiment of the invention can, of course, be carried out without departing from the scope thereof. Accordingly, to promote the progress in science and the useful arts, the invention is disclosed and is intended to be limited only by the scope of the appended claims.