High gain Bi-directional KY converter for low power EV applications

In electric vehicles (EVs), the type of electric motor and converter technology have a significant impact on regulating the operational characteristics of the vehicle. Therefore, in this work, the modified bi-directional KY converter (BKYC) is proposed for EV applications. The main contributions of the proposed converter are high step-up/step-down conversion gain, bi-directional power flow, simplified control structure, continuous current, common ground, low volume, and high efficiency. An inductor on either side of the converter ensures continuous current flow and passive components are arranged to operate in series to offer high step-up/step-down conversion. The charging and discharging operations, steady-state analysis, and design process of the proposed converter are discussed in detail and compared with similar bi-directional converter topologies. Further, the efficiency analysis of the proposed converter is presented and found that the efficacy of 95.51 % in charging operation and 96.52 % in discharging operation of operation. The simulations are carried out using MATLAB/ Simulink environment. Further, a prototype of a modified bi-directional KY converter is implemented with a TMS320F28335 processor and validated with theoretical and simulation counterparts.