Pulsed Power Technology

Design and Construction of 30 kV Capacitor Charger Using of Series

Resonant Converter1
H.R. Hafezi, S.J. Mousavi, M. Barati, and M.H. Rahdan

Electronic and Communication Research Center, Majdzadeh, Tehran, 1355874541, I.R. IRAN
Phone: +98 (021) 55765748, E-mail:h_r_hafezi@yahoo.com

Abstract – A power supply specifically designed for resonant inverters are based on resonant current oscil-
capacitor-charging applications that uses a series- lation. The capacitor-charging power supply utilizes a
resonant circuit topology, a constant on- series resonant “H” bridge topology. [1–3] The operat-
time/variable frequency control scheme, and zero- ing frequency is typically in the range of 40 to 60 kHz.
current switching techniques has been developed. This topology is inherently short circuit proof because
The CCPS is based on a series load resonant topol- of the high source impedance it presents to the output
ogy and uses IGTBs as switching devices. The circuit.
CCPS differs from conventional power supplies in The CCPS differs from conventional power sup-
that capacitor charging requires operation over a plies in that capacitor charging requires operation over
wide range of load conditions (varying from nearly a wide range of load conditions (varying from nearly
short-circuit when the capacitor has no charge to short-circuit when the capacitor has no charge to
nearly open-circuit when the capacitor is almost nearly open-circuit when the capacitor is almost fully
fully charged). This kind of performance can be charged). This kind of performance can be best
best achieved by supplying a constant charging achieved by supplying a constant charging current: the
current: the instantaneous output power then is instantaneous output power then is minimal at the
minimal at the charge beginning and maximum at charge beginning and maximum at the charge end.
the charge end. The performance of this capacitor- Three types of resonant inverter topologies are
charging power supply (CCPS) has been evaluated usually used for CCPS; series-resonant circuit, parallel
in the laboratory by charging several values of load resonant circuit and series-parallel resonant circuit.
capacitance at various repetition rates. The CCPS Due to its simple circuit topology and control system,
has charged a 40 nF capacitor from 0 to 30 kV DC excellent short circuit proof capability and constant-
in 9 ms, exhibiting a charging power of 2000 J/s. current characteristic is obtained. The series resonant
This operation has been repeated at a rate of 100 circuit was adopted in CCPS [1–3]. This paper de-
charges per second. These results indicate that this scribes the design and experimental results of the
design is feasible for use in capacitor-charging ap- CCPS.
plications.
2. System description
1. Introduction The whole system is realized by a simple combination
Interest in rep-rate operation of pulsed power systems of the desired number of HV modules that may be
has led to an increase in power requirements of high connected both in series or parallel. The difficulty to
voltage (HV) capacitor charging power supplies reliably control a single 30 kV/2 KJ/s module in addi-
(CCPS). tion to the associated high voltage insulation problems
The requirements for a power supply charging the forced us to use two modules of 15 kV/1 kJ/s in series.
capacitor are severe The simple schematic of a CCPS is presented in
The main requirements for these applications Fig. 1.
should be as follow: As seen in the Fig. 1 the CCPS includes four basic
• Charging voltage regulated up to few kV. modules: input power module, inverter module, high-
• Charging time as low as few ms. voltage output module, and control module.
• The capability of withstanding short circuit con- The AC input section includes an EMI filter, an in-
ditions. rush current-limit circuit, a rectifier, and filter capaci-
The turn-on and the turn-off losses of the switch- tors. When the AC power is energized, a high inrush
ing devices are significantly high in converters with surge during the charging period of the input capaci-
PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation) control. The disad- tors is prevented by the inrush current-limiting circuit.
vantages of The rectifier and the filter provide a stable DC voltage
PWM control can be eliminated or minimized if to the inverter section. The AC/DC converter includes
the switching devices are turned “on” and “off” when Series of Resonance Converters. Also, the high-
the voltage across the devices and/or their current is voltage tank consists of a high-frequency transformer,
zero. The voltage and the current are forced to pass multiple full-wave bridges, and voltage and current
through zero by an LC-resonant circuit. The series monitoring circuits.

1
The work was supported by Electronic and Communication Research Center under Contract No. 34Etr76J.
296
 Oral Session

Fig. 1. Simplified block diagram of the CCPS

3. Principle of series resonance converter (SRC) 2

⎛N ⎞
ĆL  ⎜ 2 ⎟ CL .
⎝ N1 ⎠
Figure 2 shows the circuit diagram of SRC.

Usually in high-voltage applications ĆL is at least

one order of magnitude greater than Cr. Therefore, it
can be neglected:
1
Ceq   Cr .
1 1
 '
Cr CL
Therefore Z0 and f0 are extracted by Cr and Lr. Op-
erating the circuit at the frequency fs < f0/2, all switches
and anti-parallel diodes turn on and off at zero current.
Fig. 2. Simplified block diagram of SRC Therefore switching losses are reduced to a minimum
The characteristic impedance Z0 of the bridge load and no snubbers are required.
is given by:
4. Simulation of SRC with commercial circuit
L analysis programs
Z0  ,
Ceq Operation of SRC can be accurately simulated through
the commercial circuit analysis programs (Fig. 3). As
and its resonance frequency f0 can be considered as it can be seen from the simulation results (Fig. 4) the
1 current flowing in the series- resonant load Cr and Lr is
f0  , a series of sinusoids and switches are commutated
2 LCeq
when the currents are zero. The charging voltage of
where Ceq is the series combination of capacitors ĆL capacitor increases at the constant rate (Fig. 5) while
and Cr, in which ĆL is the equivalent value of CL the pulsed charging current average value is constant
transferred to the primary: during all cycles.

V1 = 0 V1 = 0
V2 = 5 V6 S5 V2 = 5 V7 S6
TD = 0 + +
D9 TD = 10u + +
D10
TR = 1n - -
TR = 1n - -
V11 TF = 1n GND1 Dbreak TF = 1n GND1 Dbreak C6 L3 34uH D18 D20
Sbreak Sbreak
PW = 5u PW = 5u 1 2 TX3 Dbreak Dbreak
31.1 Vdc PER = 20u PER = 20u
70nf
C5
V1 = 0 V1 = 0
V2 = 5 V8 S7 V2 = 5 V9 S8 R3 40n
TD = 10u + +
D11 TD = 0 + +
D12 D17
TF = 1n - -
TR = 1n - - Dbreak
GND1 GND1 1m
TR = 1n Dbreak TF = 1n Dbreak K528T500_3C8 D19
Sbreak Sbreak
PW = 5u PW = 5u Dbreak
PER = 20u PER = 20u L1_TURNS = 10

GND1 L2_TURNS = 400 0

0
0
Fig. 3. Circuit simulation of SRC

297
 Pulsed Power Technology

The characteristic impedance Z0 of the bridge load is:

Lr 34uH
Z0    22,
Ceq 70nF
Vin V 400
I0     in   18 A.
Z0 Lr 22
Ceq
It should be noted that in the beginning of charge
process the current flow through the IGBTs is I0.On
the contrary, at the end of the charge process due to
the energy accumulated in the resonant load (i.e. Cr
and Lr) load current increases up to 2I0:
Time
Iswitch  2 I0  2 18  36 A.
Fig. 4. Simulated waveform of the SRC
The full-bridge inverter is composed of four
IGBTs (IRG4PH50UD, 1200 V-42 A-200 kHz) manu-
factured by International rectifier.

5.1. High voltage transformer

In the series resonant circuit, the stray inductance of
the high voltage transformer is the resonant induc-
tance (Lr). High frequency requires a small, high per-
meability cores (e.g. ferrite cores) and twisted winding
topology. Wounding of primary and secondary on two
different legs of the core lets us to make a better insu-
lation capability between high voltage and low voltage
sections. According to above statements the parame-
ters of interested transformer are listed in Table 2.
Table 2. Transformer requirements
Time
Symbol Parameter Value
Fig. 5. Simulation waveform of series resonance V1 Primary Voltage 400 V
V2 Secondary Voltage 15 kV
5. SRC design I1 Primary RMS Current 4A
The required parameters of the CCPS are summarized I2 Secondary RMS Current 200 mA
in Table 1. f Switching frequency 50 kHz
L1 Primary leakage inductance 34 uH
Table 1. Parameters of the CCPS
The primary is composed of three windings of 11
DC input voltage 400 Vdc turns each connected in parallel to minimize skin ef-
Peak power 2 kW fect losses. The secondary is composed of a single
Output voltage 30 kV winding of 400 turns. The core of the transformer is
Capacitance 40 nF two U-shape ferrite cores (Type U103). In Fig. 6 the
Charging time 9 ms
high voltage transformer is shown.
Switching frequency 50 kHz

The working frequency of the inverter of the serial

resonant circuit is set at 50 kHz. The resonant induc-
tance of 34 μH is the stray inductance of the high volt-
age transformer. The capacitance of the resonant ca-
pacitor can be calculated by:
f0 = 2fs ⇒ f0 = 2  50 kHz = 100 kHz.
1
f0  ⇒ Cr 
2 Lr Cr
1
  70nf .
4  34uH  100kHz 
2 2
Fig. 6. High voltage transformer

298
 Oral Session

C. High voltage full-bridge rectifier voltage of 400 V. The obtained peak-charging rate is
The full-bridge rectifier is composed of 60 fast recov- 2 kJ/s.
ery diodes (BYT43M) rated at 1000 V/1 A. Each Figure 10 shows the resonant current waveform in
bridge arm is composed of 15 diodes in series. The details at the beginning of the charge process. The
rectifier is merged in oil beside the transformer. Fig. 7 resonant frequency is 50 kHz and the peak resonant
shows the full-bridge rectifier. current is 26 A.

Fig. 7. Full-bridge rectifier

6. Experimental results
Experiments were carried out to test the performance
of the CCPS (Fig. 8). The experimental setup is shown Fig. 10. Resonant circuit current waveforms
in Fig. 9.
7. Conclusion
The series resonant inverter power supply is designed
and constructed for the capacitor charging applica-
tions. The performance of this capacitor-charging
power supply (CCPS) has been evaluated in the labo-
ratory by charging several values of capacitance load
at various repetition rates. The CCPS has charged a
40 nF capacitor up to 30 kV DC in 9 ms, exhibiting a
charging power of 2000 J/s. Future works will needed
to improve the system efficiency to reduce the charg-
ing time, burst mode charging , and higher charging
voltages.

Fig. 8. Charging waveform for a 40 nF capacitor at 30 kV References

and 9 ms charging time
[1] Heqing Zhong, Zhixin Xu, Xudong Zou et al.,
“Current Characteristic of High Voltage Capaci-
tor Charging Power Supply Using a Series Reso-
nant Topology”, in Proc. of the 29th Annual Con-
ference of Industrial Electronics Societythe, V. 1,
2–6 Nov, 2003, pp. 373–377.
[2] A.C. Lippincott, R.M. Nelms, M. Garbi, and
E. Strickland, “A series resonant converter with
constant on-time control for capacitor charging
applications”, in Proc. of 5th Annual Conf. and
Exposition APEC '90, 1990, pp. 147–154.
Fig. 9. Experimental setup 1990, Fifth Annual 11–16 March 1990,
pp. 147–154.
The charging experiment was carried out on 18 J [3] M.M. McQuage, V.P. McDowell, F.E. Peterkin,
by a 40 nF capacitor bank. The prototype inverter and J.A. Pasour, “High Power Density Capacitor
power supply linearly proves its performance by Charging Power Supply Development for Repeti-
charging a 40 nf capacitor bank up to 30 kV in a 9 ms. tive Pulsed Power”, presented at the Power Modu-
The average output current is 200 mA with original lator Symp., 2006.

299