770 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 47, NO.

4, AUGUST 2000

Actively Clamped Bidirectional Flyback Converter

Gang Chen, Yim-Shu Lee, Senior Member, IEEE, S. Y. R. Hui, Senior Member, IEEE, Dehong Xu, and
Yousheng Wang

Abstract—An actively clamped bidirectional flyback converter Transformer of the proposed converter.
is proposed. The converter’s operation is examined in detail. All Switching period.
switches in the converter have zero-voltage-switching character- Average voltage across capacitor .
istics. A low-frequency behavior model and small-signal transfer
functions are derived. It is found that the flow of current is directly Instantaneous voltage across capacitor .
under the control of the duty cycle, and that the transformer’s Average voltage across capacitor .
leakage inductance has a significant effect on the control charac- Instantaneous voltage across capacitor .
teristic of the converter. It is expected that such bidirectional con- Drain to source voltage of MOSFET
verters will find wide applications in the interconnection of mul- .
tiple sources of dc power to a common bus (e.g., in a dc uninter-
ruptible power supply). Simulation and experiment results are also Gate to source voltage of MOSFET
presented. .
Average voltage across .
Index Terms—Active clamping, bidirectional converter, flyback
converter. Instantaneous voltage across .
Average voltage across the magnetizing inductance of
transformer.
NOMENCLATURE Instantaneous voltage across the magnetizing induc-
Duty cycle of pulsewidth modulation (PWM) controller tance of transformer.
output.
Duty cycle of actively clamp switch . I. INTRODUCTION
Average input current of capacitor .
Instantaneous input current of capacitor
Average input current of capacitor .
.
B IDIRECTIONAL dc–dc converters allow the transfer of
power between two dc sources in either direction. They
are increasingly used in applications such as dc uninterruptible
Instantaneous input current of capacitor . power supplies [1] [2], battery chargers [3], multiplexed-battery
Average current of . systems [4], computer systems, aerospace systems [5] [6], and
Instantaneous current of . dc motor drives circuits [7] [8].
Average magnetizing current of transformer. Many bidirectional converter topologies have been reported
Instantaneous magnetizing current of transformer. [1]–[9]. In low-power applications, the flyback topology is
Current from drain to source of MOSFET more attractive due to its simplicity and easy control of bidi-
. rectional power transfer [1]. However, conventional flyback
Current from knife to joint of switch bidirectional converters suffer from high voltage and current
. stresses. To solve this problem, some circuits use resonant
Average output current of dc source . techniques [5] [6]. However, the voltage or current stresses in
Instantaneous output current of dc source . these circuits are still high because of the resonant operation.
Average output current of dc source . Some other circuits operate the converter at variable frequency
Instantaneous output current of dc source . [10], which is, however, undesirable for many applications.
Magnetizing inductance of transformer. In this paper, an actively clamped bidirectional flyback
Total effective inductance in series with the primary converter is proposed. This converter has a fixed switching
winding of transformer. frequency and is always operated in continuous conduction
Turns ratio of transformer ( ). mode. All switching transistors have zero-voltage-switching
Number of turns of primary winding. (ZVS) characteristics. The energy trapped in the transformer
Number of turns of secondary winding. leakage inductance is recycled and the stresses of the switches
are minimized. The operation and modeling of the proposed
Manuscript received May 16, 1999; revised January 20, 2000. Abstract pub- converter are verified by simulation and experimental results.
lished on the Internet April 21, 2000. This work was supported by the University
Grants Committee of Hong Kong and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
G. Chen and Y.-S. Lee are with the Department of Electronic and Information II. PRINCIPLES OF OPERATION
Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
S. Y. R. Hui is with the Department of Electronic and Information Engi- Fig. 1 shows the circuit topology of the proposed actively
neering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong. clamped bidirectional flyback converter. In this topology, ac-
D. Xu and Y. Wang are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Zhe-
jiang University, 310027 Hangzhou, China. tively clamped circuits are employed at both ends of the con-
Publisher Item Identifier S 0278-0046(00)06826-X. verter. In the design, the inductance , which consists of the
0278–0046/00$10.00 © 2000 IEEE
CHEN et al.: ACTIVELY CLAMPED BIDIRECTIONAL FLYBACK CONVERTER 771

the switching topological states of the converter. All power

MOSFET’s are shown as switches. In Fig. 2, power is trans-
ferred from to . The switching cycle is divided into ten
states. The conducting paths for each state are denoted by thick
solid lines. Fig. 3 shows the key waveforms of the proposed
converter.
In the description of the operation of the actively clamped
bidirectional flyback converter shown in Fig. 1, the following
Fig. 1. Proposed actively clamped bidirectional flyback converter. assumptions are made.
• The converter has reached a steady-state operation.
• The values of the two clamping capacitors ( and )
are large enough so that the voltage ripples across them are
small.
• is much smaller than (the magnetizing inductance
of ).
• The resonant frequency of clamping capacitor (or
) and inductance is much lower than the switching
frequency of the converter.
Referring to the ten topological states shown in Fig. 2 and the
waveforms shown in Fig. 3, the operation of the converter can
be explained as follows.
State 1
1) Just before , is on, and are off, and the
body diode of is conducting.
2) At , is turned on under zero-voltage condition.
3) The dc source is discharged. The magnetizing in-
ductance ( ) of is charged up linearly.
4) The voltage across is clamped to .
State 2
1) and are turned off at .
2) Capacitor , which is in parallel with , is charged
up by the current in . Capacitor , which is in par-
allel with , is discharged.
State 3
1) In this period, the voltages across the drain and source
of and are reduced to zero, and the body
diodes of and start conducting.
Fig. 2. Switching topological states of the actively clamped bidirectional 2) The voltage across is clamped at and
flyback converter. the voltage across is clamped at .
State 4
leakage inductance of the transformer and the external series in- 1) At , and are turned on under zero-voltage
ductance, is used to achieve ZVS and easy control of power flow. condition.
It also helps to turn off smoothly the transistor’s body diode at 2) Because of the relatively large capacitance of , the
the output end. In this way, the output noise and switching loss current in first decreases linearly to zero, and then
are reduced. Two small capacitors and are employed to increases linearly in the reverse direction. At the same
improve the ZVS performance. time, the charging current to increases linearly.
This converter always operates in continuous conduction 3) operates as synchronous rectifier to reduce the
-mode. The gate drive signals of MOSFET’s and are conduction loss.
essentially complementary, with the exception of small gaps
State 5
between pulses. is turned off at the same time as .
is turned off at the same time as . (or ) is turned on 1) and are turned off at .
when the drain to source voltage across it is zero. By changing 2) The current in discharges . The charging current
the pulsewidths of the driving signals, both the direction and of flows through the body diode of .
amplitude of power flow can be controlled. State 6 At , is fully discharged and the body
Since the circuit is symmetrical, in this section, only one diode of begins to conduct. The voltage across is
directional flow of power is discussed in detail. Fig. 2 shows zero and the voltage across is clamped at .
772 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 47, NO. 4, AUGUST 2000

Fig. 3. Steady-state waveforms of the actively clamped bidirectional flyback converter.

State 7 State 9 At t , the body diode of is off. The

1) is turned on at under zero-voltage condition. capacitor starts to be charged. Consequently, the voltage
2) During this interval ( ), the direction of the current across begins to decrease.
in changes back to positive (to flow into the drain State 10 At , the voltage of the has reached the
of ). point that the body diode of starts to conduct. The voltage
3) The charging current of starts to reduce linearly across is clamped at . is turned on again
toward zero. under the zero-voltage condition. Then, another switching
State 8 cycle starts.
1) This is the reverse-recovery period of the bode diode of The direction of power flow in the above-mentioned oper-
. A small reverse current flows into this body diode. ation is from to . If we want to transfer power in the
2) The current in continues to increase. reverse direction, we need to reduce the pulsewidths of the
CHEN et al.: ACTIVELY CLAMPED BIDIRECTIONAL FLYBACK CONVERTER 773

(a) (b)

(c)

Fig. 4. Idealized switching stages of the proposed converter. (a) t 0t . (b) t 0t . (c) t 0t .

driving signals and and, at the same time, increase ative direction. At the same time, current increases linearly
the pulsewidths of and . in the reverse direction. Power is delivered to .
It is expected that the proposed converter will find wide ap- The last stage is shown in Fig. 4(c) ( ). In this stage,
plications in the interconnection of multiple dc power sources and are on, and and are off. The current in de-
to a common dc bus. creases to zero rapidly. At the same time, the current in
increases rapidly until it is equal to the current in .
Based on the three stages mentioned above, a low-frequency
behavior model of the converter will be derived.
III. MODELING AND ANALYSIS OF
LOW-FREQUENCY BEHAVIOR
A. Low-Frequency Behavior Modeling and DC Analysis
In the modeling of the low-frequency behavior of the bidirec- From the waveforms shown in Fig. 5, it can be found that the
tional flyback converter, the following assumptions (referring to current in S2 ( ) reduces to zero at (and ). At this time,
Fig. 4) are made. the current in is equal to the current in , i.e.,
• is the magnetizing inductance of the power trans-
former.
• is an ideal transformer. (1)
• All transistors (including their body diodes) are ideal
(2)
switching elements.
• Switch and switch are always in complementary
states. From (2) and the current waveforms of and shown in
• Switch and switch are also always in complemen- Fig. 5, the following equations can be obtained:
tary states.
• and are turned on immediately after and are
turned off [as shown in Fig. 4(b)].
• is turned on (and is turned off) only when the cur-
rent in is reduced to zero [transition from Fig. 4(c)
to(a)].
As a result of the assumptions made above, the operation can (3)
be simplified to three stages, as shown in Fig. 4.
The first stage is shown in Fig. 4(a) ( ). In this stage, and
and are on, and are off. It is the main stage when
delivers output power into the converter. The voltage across
the secondary winding of the transformer is clamped to .
and are charged linearly. (4)
The second stage is shown in Fig. 4(b) ( ). In this stage, Therefore, we know the time when is turned off (and is
and are on, and and are off. The voltage across turned on).
and is clamped to . The current in ( ) first The low-frequency behavior model of the proposed converter
decreases linearly to zero and then increases linearly in the neg- is shown in Fig. 6. (The detailed analyses of the average currents
774 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 47, NO. 4, AUGUST 2000

Fig. 5. Idealized switching waveforms of the proposed converter.

in , and , , can be found in the Ap- (9)

pendix.)
Referring to the low-frequency behavior model shown in Equations (A4), (A9), and (A12) in the Appendix also, respec-
Fig. 6, the following equations can be obtained: tively, show that

(5)

(6)
(10)
(7)
(11)
(8)
CHEN et al.: ACTIVELY CLAMPED BIDIRECTIONAL FLYBACK CONVERTER 775

On the other hand, by assuming a maximum output current

, the maximum value of can also be found
(21)
Equations (20) and (21) can be used as guidelines for the de-
sign of .

B. Small-Signal AC Analysis
The small-signal characteristics of the converter can be ob-
tained by adding perturbations as follows:

Fig. 6. Low-frequency behavior model of the proposed converter.

(12) (22)
Substituting (22) into (4)–(12), and using the dc solutions
The converter’s dc solutions can be obtained by letting (13)–(19), the following Laplace transformed equations are
the differential components ( , , and obtained (the second- and higher terms are omitted):
) in the above equations be zero and combining
(4)–(12). This gives

(13)

(14)

(15)

(16)
(23)
(17)

(18) (24)

(19)

It is interesting to note that, from (19), the inductance

plays an important role in the characteristics of the converter.
Due to the presence of , the output current can now be
directly controlled by varying the duty cycle .
In order to maintain a proper actively clamped operation and a
valid (19), the resonant frequency formed by and should
be much lower than the switching frequency of the converter.
Assuming that the resonant period is larger than twice the max-
imum off time of switch , the minimum value of can be
determined

(20) (25)
776 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 47, NO. 4, AUGUST 2000

(26)

0
Fig. 7. Simulated and calculated ( [ I (s)]= D (s)) characteristics for D =
0:6 [- -4 - -: simulated results (using PSpice); —: calculated results (using
MATLAB)],

ample of the characteristic for a circuit (shown

in Fig. 1) with the following parameters is plotted:
V H H
(27) F kHz and
From (31),

(28) (32)

(29)
The dotted lines in Fig. 7 are the result of PSpice simulation
In order to determine the small-signal transfer func- based on the low-frequency behavior model shown in Fig. 6.
tion between the output current and the duty cycle The solid lines are the result of calculation (using MATLAB)
( ), we first assume that based on (32). It can be found that they agree with each other
very well.
(30)

Substituting (30) into (23)–(29), the small-signal transfer func- IV. SIMULATED AND EXPERIMENT RESULTS
tion is found as In order to verify the properties of the proposed converter,
experiments are also performed under the following condi-
(31) tions:
power (into
where ) W, and are MOSFET SMP40N10, and
and are MOSFET IRF540.
Fig. 8 shows the experimental waveforms. The waveforms
for a power flow from to are shown in Fig. 8(a). These
waveforms resemble closely those shown in Fig. 3. Symmet-
rical waveforms are observed when power flows from to
. Fig. 8(b) shows the waveforms when there is no net flow of
power. It is found that the converter maintains ZVS performance
even under no-load (or light load) condition. The efficiency of
the proposed converter is plotted in Fig. 9.
Fig. 10 shows the measured small-signal transfer characteris-
tics ( ) for a duty cycle of 0.6. In the low-fre-
quency range, the measured characteristics agree well with the
calculated characteristics. In the high-frequency range, there
is some difference between them. The reason is that the av-
To cross check the low-frequency behavior model shown in erage-value modeling method is not very accurate at high fre-
Fig. 6 with the results of the ac analysis given above, an ex- quencies near the switching frequency. In addition, the effects
CHEN et al.: ACTIVELY CLAMPED BIDIRECTIONAL FLYBACK CONVERTER 777

(a)

(b)

Fig. 8. Experimental waveforms (top trace: v (20 V/div; middle trace: v (50 V/div; bottom trace: i 5 A/div). (a) Power flows from V 1 to V 2. (b) No power
flow.

of the parasitical parameters in the circuit are more significant in this converter. A low-frequency model of the proposed con-
at high frequency. verter was built and analyzed. It was found that the output cur-
rent of the converter can be controlled directly by varying the
duty cycle. All theoretical analyses have been verified by both
V. CONCLUSION
simulations and experiments. The proposed converter is particu-
The principle of operation of an actively clamped bidirec- larly suitable for applications like low-power dc uninterruptible
tional flyback converter has been described. ZVS is achieved power supplies.
778 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS, VOL. 47, NO. 4, AUGUST 2000

From the voltage waveform and current waveform of shown

in Fig. 5, we have

(A3)

Combining (A2) and (A3) into (A1), the following is obtained:

(A4)

Fig. 9. Efficiency of the proposed converter. (Power transferred from V 1 to From Fig. 4, it can be also found that, in the interval ,
V 2 is positive. Power transferred from V 2 to V 1 is negative.)
the current flowing into is times the difference between
the current in and the current in

(A5)

The average current flowing into is given by

(A6)

From the current waveforms shown in Fig. 5, we get

(A7)

(A8)

Substituting (A7) and (A8) into (A6) and according to the

0
Fig. 10. Measured and calculated  [ I (s)]= D (s) characteristics for voltage waveforms of and , the average current flowing
D = 0:6 [ 111 111
o : measured results in experiment; —: calculated results into is obtained
(using MATLAB)].

(A9)
APPENDIX

The expressions of the average currents in , , and From the current waveform of , the average current in can
( , , and ) in the low-frequency behavior model be calculated as follows:
of the proposed converter shown in Fig. 6, are derived in this
Appendix.
Referring to Figs. 4 and 5, it can be found that, in the interval
, the current flowing into is equal to the current (A10)
in . Therefore, the average current of can be given as
follows:

(A11)

Combining (A1)–(A3), (A7), (A10), and (A11), the following

(A1) expression can also be found:

We also know

(A2) (A12)
CHEN et al.: ACTIVELY CLAMPED BIDIRECTIONAL FLYBACK CONVERTER 779

REFERENCES S. Y. (Ron) Hui (M’87–SM’94) was born in Hong

Kong in 1961. He received the B.Sc. (Hons.) degree
[1] K. Venkatesan, “Current mode controlled bidirectional flyback con-
in 1984 from the University of Birmingham, Birm-
verter,” in Proc. IEEE PESC’89, 1989, pp. 835–842. ingham, U.K., and the D.I.C. and Ph.D degree in 1987
[2] M. Jain, P. K. Jain, and M. Daniele, “Analysis of a bi-directional DC-DC
from Imperial College of Science, Technology and
converter topology for low power application,” in Proc. CCECE’97, Medicine, London, U.K.
1997, pp. 548–551. He was a Lecturer in power electronics at the
[3] D. M. Sable, F. C. Lee, and B. H. Cho, “A zero-voltage- switching
University of Nottingham, Nottingham, U.K.,
bidirectional battery charger/discharger for the NASA EOS satellite,” during 1987–1990. In 1990, he became a Lecturer
in Proc. IEEE APEC’92, 1992, pp. 614–620.
at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia,
[4] R. K. Williams and W. Grabowski, “Single package 30-V battery dis- where he became a Senior Lecturer in 1991. He
connect switch facilitates battery multiplexing in notebook computers,”
later joined the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, where he became a
in Proc. IEEE APEC’98, 1998, pp. 691–699. Reader of Electrical Engineering and Director of the Power Electronics and
[5] B. Ray, “Single-cycle resonant bidirectional DC/DC power conversion,”
Drives Research Group in 1996. He is currently a Chair Professor of Electronic
in Proc. IEEE APEC’93, 1993, pp. 44–50. Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. He has authored more
[6] Z. R. Martinez and B. Ray, “Bidirectional DC/DC power conversion than 140 published technical papers, including more than 70 refereed journal
using constant frequency multi-resonant topology,” in Proc. IEEE
publications. His research interests include all aspects of power electronics.
APEC’94, 1994, pp. 991–997. Prof. Hui is a Fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, U.K., Insti-
[7] F. Caricchi, F. Crescimbini, F. G. Capponi, and L. Solero, “Study
tuion of Engineers, Australia, and Hong Kong Institution of Engineers. He is
of bi-directional buck-boost converter topologies for application in an Associate Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS. In
electrical vehicle motor drives,” in Proc. IEEE APEC’98, 1998, pp.
1999, he received the Teaching Excellence Award from the City University of
287–293. Hong Kong.
[8] F. Caricchi, F. Crescimbini, and A. Di Napoli, “20 kW water-cooled
prototype of a buck-boost bidirectional DC-DC converter topology for
electrical vehicle motor drives,” in Proc. IEEE APEC’95, 1995, pp.
887–892.
[9] G. K. Schoneman, “500-W zero-voltage-switched full-bridge two-quad-
rant power modulator,” in Proc. IEEE APEC’93, 1993, pp. 700–704.
[10] M. T. Zhang, M. M. Jovanovic, and F. C. Lee, “Design considerations
and performance evaluations of synchronous rectification in flyback
converters,” in Proc. IEEE APEC’97, 1997, pp. 623–630.
Dehong Xu was born in Hangzhou, China, in 1961.
He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from
Gang Chen was born in China in 1972. He received the Department of Electrical Engineering, Zhejiang
the B.S. and M.S. degrees in 1994 and 1997, University, Hangzhou, China, in 1983, 1986, and
respectively, from the Department of Electrical 1989, respectively.
Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, Since 1989, he has been a faculty member at Zhe-
where he is currently working toward the Ph.D. jiang University, where he is currently a Professor in
degree in power electronics. the Department of Electrical Engineering. He was a
He is currently a Research Assistant in the De- Visiting Scholar in the Department of Electrical En-
partment of Electronic and Information Engineering, gineering , University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan, from
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong. May 1995 to June 1996. His research interests in-
His research interests include converters, dc motor clude application of advanced control in power electronics, high-frequency con-
drivers, PFC circuits, and soft-switching techniques. version, and power quality.

Yim-Shu Lee (SM’98) received the M.Sc. degree

from the University of Southampton, Southampton,
U.K., and the Ph.D. degree from the University
of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, in 1974 and 1988,
respectively.
He had been with Cable and Wireless, Rediffusion
Television, and the General Post Office, all in Hong Yousheng Wang was born in 1928. He received the
Kong, before joining The Hong Kong Polytechnic B.S. degree from the Department of Electrical En-
University, Hong Kong, in December 1969 as a gineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, in
member of the academic staff. Currently, he is the 1950.
Chair Professor of Electronic Engineering in the In 1950, he joined the Department of Electrical En-
Department of Electronic and Information Engineering. He is the author of gineering, Zhejiang University, as a faculty member.
Computer-Aided Analysis and Design of Switch-Mode Power Supplies (New He became a Professor in 1978. His research interests
York: Marcel Dekker, 1993). In addition, he has authored more than 100 include power electronics and high-frequency induc-
published technical papers on the design of electronic circuits. His current tion heating.
research interests include power electronics and computer-aided design of Prof. Wang is a member of the China Technology
analog circuits. Academy. He has won several national awards for his
Prof. Lee is a Fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, U.K., and the outstanding work in large electric generator and static induction heating equip-
Hong Kong Institution of Engineers. ment.