DEVELOPMENT OF LOW-COST, HIGH-EFFICIENCY, HIGH-DENSITY, DIGITALLY-CONTROLLED DC-DC CONVERTER

The unique requirements of the high-voltage capacitive load DC/DC converter for the Navy’s non-explosive based acoustic source provide an exciting opportunity for applying innovative design concepts not commonly encountered in commercial power supply product design. The objective of this SBIR proposal is to investigate the technical feasibility of a unique 6000V DC/DC converter design to achieve high power density, high efficiency, and extremely low manufacturing cost at the same time. The proposed converter features a simple yet elegant interleaved parallel/series flyback topology, an innovative control mechanism to enhance the energy delivery efficiency under a wide output voltage range of 0-6000V, and a highly compact magnetics design. The novel control mechanism includes a variable frequency peak current mode digital control strategy and a feedback control loop completely isolated from the high voltage load, Our preliminary first order modeling analysis indicates that these proposed design concepts show a great promise in meeting the Navy’s product specifications. A more elaborated research plan in the design, modeling, analysis, optimization, and prototyping of the converter is provided in detail in this proposal. In the Phase I option, one or more prototypes will be built in order to verify and improve the proposed design concepts