Design of a four-phase interleaved boost circuit with closed-coupled inductors

In this paper, a novel magnetic structure suitable for boost converters is proposed. Multi-phase interleaved method using coupled-inductor has gained attention in electric powertrains for electric, hybrid and fuel cell vehicles in order to achieve high power density. In fact, a four-phase boost converter using coupled inductor is used in the drive system of the Honda CLARITY. In particular, magnetic coupling method is used in coupled inductors, Loosely-Coupled Inductors (LCI) and Closed-Coupled Inductors (CCI). This study is focused on these methods, especially using the CCI. This paper presents a design method of a closed-coupled inductors using generic cores for a four-phase interleaved boost converter. In addition a comparison between the proposed topology with other conventional non-coupled methods is carried out. Furthermore, the evaluation of miniaturization is studied. As a result, the proposed method can achieve a huge reduction in the core volume and mass.