Novel Snubberless Bidirectional ZCS/ZVS Current-Fed Half-Bridge Isolated Dc/Dc Converter for Fuel Cell Vehicles

This paper presents a novel snubberless bidirectional current-fed half-bridge isolated dc/dc converter for fuel cell vehicles. The proposed converter achieves zero-current switching (ZCS) for the primary-side switches and zero-voltage switching (ZVS) for the secondary-side switches. It is a potential topology for fuel cell vehicles, front-end dc/dc power conversion for fuel cell inverters etc.. This proposed converter is unique, not reported in literature and provides a simple solution to switch turn-off problem with ZCS without increase in components count. Therefore, it eliminates the need of active-clamp and passive snubbers to absorb the turn-off voltage spike. This will lead to reduced size, lower cost and higher efficiency. Steady-state analysis, design, simulation and experimental results of the proposed converter are reported in this paper.