Compact three-phase AC inductor network for PFC converter using magnetic coupled technique

Three-phase power factor correction (PFC) converters have been widely utilized in industrial power applications to improve the power factor and reduce current harmonics in three-phase power grid. The PFC converters commonly incorporate large-sized inductors as a noise filter to suppress the noise emission to the grid. However, as many other power converters, the PFC converters are intensely required to achieve high power density by reducing the size of the inductors. The purpose of this paper is to propose a magnetic structure to miniaturize the inductors. The proposed magnetic structure consists of an integrated magnetic component and a three-phase common-mode choke. By integrating the inductors, the proposed magnetic structure can miniaturize the magnetic core volume, while keeping the saturation current level and the noise filtering capability unchanged. Experiment was carried out to evaluate the appropriateness of the proposed magnetic structure as well as possible volume reduction. As a result, 32.2% volume reduction was found in the proposed magnetic structure without deterioration of the filtering capability.