Converter design and control
EELAB has been designing and building power electronic converters from before 1980, which means that a lot of expertise is available to design or analyse power electronic converters in a wide range of applications: ac-dc converters with power factor correction, high-efficiency dc-dc converters, inverters for motor drives. The key issues are:
- For the control of these converters, we have experience with analogue control as well as with digital control.
- Concerning gate drives, several generations have already passed. The first was to obtain good dv/dt immunity of fast rising edges and incorporation desaturation protection, faster drives with higher accuracy and incorporation more measurement possibilities. Now there is a tendency to gate drives with low power consumption, high reliability and small parasitic capacitance.
- Special attention was given also to good layout of power stages having very low parasitic inductance.
- There
is also research how to improve the robustness of internal power
supplies for power electronics and how to reduce the stand-by losses of
supplies for power electronics.
Relevant publications
- Van de Sype, D.M.; Van den Bossche, A.P.; Maes, J.;
Melkebeek, J.A. ”Gate-Drive Circuit for Zero-Voltage-Switching Half-
and Full-Bridge Converters”, IEEE transactions on Industry
Applications 38 (5): 1380-1388 SEP-OCT 2002 SCI-IF: 0.764 in 2003