Design, Fabrication, Performance Comparison and Studies on Buck Converters for Determining Frequency Limits of Soft Commutation Failure

This paper presents the design, analysis, fabrication and experimental results of a DC-DC Buck converter switching at 100 kHz, incorporating both zero current switching (ZCS) & zero voltage switching (ZVS). An experimental prototype has been developed in the laboratory to test the converters. The selection of the resonating elements has been done to conduct successful ZC turn-off and ZV turn-on at 100 kHz. The studies on soft switching commutation failure conditions for both ZV and ZC switching have been presented with respect to different loss figures and analysed. Further, a comparative study has been presented for hard, ZC and ZV switchings to select the most suitable scheme for a particular operating condition. The thermal performance of the switching devices, for these switching schemes have also been studied to validate the same.