A phase shifted full bridge converter with novel control over the leakage inductance

The electronics industry is progressing towards the high density board solutions due to the requirement of compact and intelligent electronic systems. In order to meet the industry demands, the power system is required to be of high power density. This article proposes one of the solution to improve the power density for the medium power applications. In phase shifted full bridge converter, the intrinsic leakage inductance of the main transformer is not high enough to obtain the zero voltage switching of the power switches for the entire operating conditions. An additional shim inductor is usually connected in series with the primary winding of the main transformer to increase the collective leakage inductance. This additional shim inductor degrades the power density of the converter. This paper proposes a method to embed and control the resonance inductance inside the main transformer. In addition to the increased inter-winding spacing, this paper proposes a practical approach to integrate the ferrite rods inside the main transformer for further increase in the leakage inductance. A power transformer is constructed and investigated by using the modelled equations to estimate the leakage inductance. A prototype phase shifted full bridge converter is also developed to investigate the performance of the proposed transformer. The converter is designed for the switching frequency of 400kHz, and tested up to 600watts output power at the input voltage of 200Vdc. The performance of the proposed converter is also compared with the converter of using an external inductor. The investigations show that, in addition to the improved power density, the converter with the proposed transformer is more efficient than the converter with the traditional transformer.