Silicon carbide power devices in multi-port active bridge converter for shipboard micro-grid applications

Abstract

Due to the increasing demand of shipboard micro-grids in high efficiency and high-power density, the conventional Si based power devices have been limited due to the limited material properties to achieve higher switching frequency or higher efficiency. As the next-generation power devices, SiC based power devices are the ideal alternative to replace conventional Si devices with increased efficiency and power density. On the other hand, the SST concept is proposed to replace conventional line frequency transformers in shipboard micro-grids without compromising the capability of galvanic isolation and voltage matching, but the volume and weight could be reduced significantly. As the core circuit of SST, the DAB converter and three-port version becomes attractive, and the currently commercialised SiC-MOSFET power module provides the enabling solution of DAB converter to be pushed to higher switching frequency, which hence increases the power density with acceptable efficiency. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the impact of SiC based power devices on the performance and design of the three-port active bridge converter. The switching and conduction performance are analysed of the built SiC based converter. In addition, within the transient analysis of SiC devices, the impact of device transient on the core loss and copper loss for the magnetic components in the three-port active bridge converter is investigated. The optimised design on heat-sink and magnetic components are proposed. And finally, experimental results are obtained as the demonstration of the proposed theories.

Date of Award	8 Jul 2019
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Univerisity of Nottingham
Supervisor	Alberto Castellazzi (Supervisor), John Xu (Supervisor) & Chunyang Gu (Supervisor)