Comparison of DC-DC Converter Interfaces for Fuel

Cells in Electric Vehicle Applications

A. Lachichi and N. Schofield
School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
The university of Manchester, M60 1QD, UK
Tel: +44 (0) 161 306 4793, Fax: +44 (0)161 306 4774
E-mail: Amel.Lachichi manchesterXac.uk
Abstract-- Due to low stack voltages and voltage regulation, fuel cell life, as discussed in [6-8], although the effects of
converters must, in general, be used to interface fuel cell to the such phenomena is still not completely understood, and is an
power-train of electric vehicles. This paper considers three area of active research. It is, however clear that a main design
converter topologies based, principally, on interleaving objective is to minimise such ripple and harmonic content.
techniques. Analysis of steady state operation is used to
compare the topologies such that design choices may be assessed
prior to the prototyping. 1.00 Activation polarisation 0.70
0.90 < (reaction rate loss) Peak power 0.63
Index Terms-- Coupled inductors, DC-DC converters, > -.0.80 0.56 0
interleaving techniques, fuel cells. 25 0.70- 0.49
0.60 Ohmic polarisation 0.42 :
:) (resistance loss),
I. INTRODUCTION U 0.50 - i l 0.35

espite efforts to series a number of basic cells, fuel cell X 040.0.28 u

stacks typically deliver current at low voltage which is, a

generally, not easy to exploit on electric vehicle power-
trains. In fact, if the technological limits to-date are
considered, the number of cells which one can put in series is
of the order of a hundred resulting in an upper DC voltage of
IOOV [1]. Additionally, fuel cells also exhibits a non-linear
performance characteristic that can significantly influence
vehicle drive system operation and component optimisation
if not considered at the system design stage. For example,
the three main fuel cell loss mechanisms, activation,
concentration and ohmic, all influence fuel cell performance
in terms of voltage drop or load regulation [2,3], as
illustrated in Figure 1, showing measured voltage and power
density curves with load current density variation for a
proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) [4].
For vehicle power-train applications above 10's kW, this
low voltage becomes impractical. Indeed, voltage levels
considered for urban electric vehicles at, and in excess of, 1.0
tonne curb mass are around 700V [5]. Hence, the use of a
power converter is required to interface the fuel cell system
to the vehicle power-train, the primary function of which is
to boost the voltage delivered by the fuel cell. Further, the
conversion stage is essential because of the variation of the
power-train DC link voltage which can vary by at least 20 %
during acceleration and regenerative braking as a
consequence of other energy sources connected in parallel
with the fuel cell system [5].
Therefore, the control of fuel cell power necessitates
power electronic conditioning via systems that consist
predominantly of DC-DC conversion, the design of which is
a crucial to the vehicle since the DC-DC converter
performance directly influences the fuel cell stack. Indeed,
the ripple and harmonic content of the current drawn from
the fuel cell stack is one of various phenomena influencing
0.30 Concentransport loss)n 021
¢ 020 ( t r
0.10 - Voltage 0.07
0.00 0.00
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 1.2 1.4
Current density / Acm -2
Fig. 1. PEMFC voltage and power density curves.
This paper presents results of a simulation study
investigating various candidate DC-DC converter structures
for fuel cell interface applications. The study was undertaken
to assess design options prior to the prototyping of a
converter system for an electric vehicle application
A wide variety of DC-DC converter topologies, including
basic structures with direct energy conversion, structures
with intermediate storage components (with or without
transformer coupling), have previously been published [9-12]
and are among the possible DC-DC converter solutions
investigated. However, some design considerations are
essential for the application considered:
* the step-up function of the converter, which is
particularly high at 8 to 10:1;
* control of the DC-DC converter power flow subject to
the wide voltage variation on the converter input due to
the fuel cell regulation (-35% of open circuit) and output
voltage variation due to the battery regulation (+1-35%
of nominal);
* low current ripple drawn from the fuel cell;
DC-DC converter structures that facilitate control of the
output current delivered by the fuel cells are interesting for
this type of application. Indeed, in this case, it is possible to

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improve the total efficiency of the whole system by the direct basic step-up converter level and has a ripple content of
control of the quantity of hydrogen fuel consumed via the period T/N.
control of the fuel cell output current [13]. The simplest
converter structure with this functionality is the basic, single
level, step-up converter. However, this topology suffers D2
from excessive component stress because of the high current N
on the fuel cell side. Interleaving the basic, single level, step-
up converter makes it possible to improve the quality of the D
fuel cell output current in terms of current ripple magnitude N
n
and harmonics. ,JW

This paper presents the primary concepts of basic, single KN

level, and interleaved step-up converters to highlight the !LN
input current ripple reduction, firstly, when inductances are I+LI
L
independent of each other and secondly when inductances 1K( T V2
are combined in one magnetic core. These structures, l
however, cannot work efficiently when a high voltage step- _
up ratio is required since the duty cycle, a, is limited by VI
circuit impedance leading to a maximum step-up ratio of
approximately 4 as illustrated in Figure 2. Hence, two series l
connected step-up converters would be required to achieve
the specific voltage gain of the application specification. Fig. 3. Interleaved N identical step-up converters.
The principle of interleaved step-up converters is then
extended to structures that use a step-up transformer. The The input current iL has a peak-to-peak ripple expressed by:
main feature of the transformer is not one of galvanic
isolation (which is not necessary in this type of application), V
but to add a higher step-up ratio than could be achieved by Al/= 1 a T XN (1)
the basic interleaved structures. L1 .N
V2 V2 where:
actual

4 2 theollvatl J I XN = )
( VI
(k-N.u).(N.a+l-k) (2)
theorical XN Nc I-a

3 k,/1, Nltakes into account the number of devices

conducting at the same time in each interval and a is the duty
cycle.
2 . Hence, the converter silicon VA rating, which will be
used to compare candidate structures, is expressed by:
1~~~~~~~
1
VA= Vl iL (3)

0 0.2 0.4 0.6
Duty cycle, -
Fig. 2. Theoretical and actual output/input ratio.
II. BASIC INTERLEAVED STEP-UP CONVERTERS
In this section we consider N interleaved basic, step-up
converters for two cases dependent on the way the N
inductances are manufactured.
A. Individual inductances
Figure 3 depicts a basic interleaved step-up converter of N
identical levels where the inductances L1 to LN are realised
by a separate magnetic core. The gate signals to the power
switching devices K1 to KN are successively phase shifted by
T/N where T is the switching period. Thus, the current
delivered by the fuel cell is shared equally between each
0.8 1 The advantage of the interleaving technique may be
demonstrated by normalising the fuel cell output current
ripple to that due to a basic, single level step-up converter:
Al
=100 XN % (4)
A ind N
where Al .d is the peak-to-peak current ripple of the simple
level step-up converter.
Figure 4 depicts the current ripple reduction ratio for
values of N from 2 to 4. It can be observed that the peak
current ripple is reduced by a factor of 1/N for N interleaved
converters and that the minimum current ripple occurs at
discrete duty cycles given by ac = a/N; where a = 1 to N-i,
giving the theoretical case for complete current ripple
cancellation.

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 50

30 \
. <, \ 1 ,> , ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~j,.j where

windings.
vj =Lj. dtddt'L

L1 and M1
di Lj N
diLji,
dt

are the self and mutual inductances of the

winding respectively, these being considered identical for all
,To obtain the expression of L1 and M1, consideration is
(6)

0~~~~~~~~~~ given to the simple magnetic equivalent circuit depicted in

r 20 Figure 6, where the winding orientations are such they create
positive MMF. RL and RC are the reluctances of the external
A
4 . columns and the central column respectively. If the resultant
z 10 magnetic circuit is perfectly symmetric, the external columns
and the lateral parts will have the same length, lo, as that of
0 '. ,. i; 8 the central column. The external column has a surface area
0 0.5 1 equal to so and an equivalent permeability that accounts for
Duty cycle distributed air gaps, whereas the central column has a surface
equal to N so.
Fig. 4. Reduction ratio of the current ripple.

The energy stored in the DC-DC converter inductance RL RL RL RL Rc

determines the volume of the magnetic core. In the general
case of N interleaved converters, the energy stored in one + + + +
inductance can be expressed as [14]: - fl. - fl.1 - .1u
nJiL n.iL2 n.iL3 n. iLN cl

WN =k.
1 -SO (5) LI L2 L3 LN

Fig. 6. Equivalent magnetic circuit.

where lo, so are the effective length and surface area
respectively of one magnetic core; k is a factor that is
dependent on core material [14]. It can be seen that the
inductor volume is reduced by a factor of N, hence there is
no inductance volumetric penalty in moving to an N-level
interleaved topology.
B. Inductances on a combined core
Theoretically, the N inductances can be combined on a
single magnetic core, consisting of N external columns, on to
which each inductor is wound and a single central column, as
illustrated in Figure 5 [15].
Winding and
current direction
Flux
direction
! o !Z !| ~~~~L1 will tend towards a value that is twice Lifld. Hence, the
Fig. 5. Converter inductances realised on one combined magnetic core.
The voltage across the winding of the jt column is expressed central column (air), the reluctance RC is higher than RL,
by:
To highlight the benefit of the combined core
arrangement, the normalised ratio between the current ripple
for independent (ind) and combined (com) inductances is
considered [14] viz:
A\iL(com) - Lind - (RL(com) + N* RC ) (7)
AiL(ind) L1 RL(ind)
Compared to the independent inductance case, the value
of the current ripple will depend strongly on the reluctance of
the central column Rc as summarised in Table I for three
possible configurations and where and FL are the jtc
permeability of the central and the external columns
respectively.
If we use same material for the central and the external
columns, the inductance LI has approximately the same value
as the independent inductances Lind. The value of the fuel cell
input current ripple is thus unchanged. If we want to decrease
External RC without changing the dimensions of this column, it is
~~~~~~~~colunm necessary to increase its permeability. If this permeability is
larger than the permeability ut of the external columns, and
if the N.R_ term is negligible compared to RL, the inductance
current ripple delivered by the fuel cell decreases by a half.
However, if we decrease the permeability Rc of the central
column, which means, in the worst case, moving out the
reducing the inductance L1. This leading to an increase of the
current ripple drawn by the fuel cell.

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 Note that whilst the active volume of the magnetic circuit arrangement the external cores will saturate unless their
remains the same, the N inductances realised on a combined dimensions are increased. This arrangement is not of interest.
magnetic core will occupy lower space than the N-individual Another arrangement of basic interleaved, single step-up
inductances. converters can be considered as discussed in [16]. Here, the
authors have considered two interleaved structures where the
TABLE I inductors are replaced by an interphase transformer (IPT).
IMPACT OF CENTRAL COLUNM ON INPUT CURRENT RIPPLE However, this IPT performs the interleaving function but
1c << 11L It = 11L c >>» L does not contribute to an improved step-up voltage ratio
(No central (Same (Different which is limited, as in the basic and multiple level
column) material) material) interleaved structures, to approximately 4.
R L(ind) 2 lo 2 lo 2 lo Thus, when a high step-up voltage is required, the
FL -S sL SO IL SO previous structures show a limitation as depicted in Figure 2.
RL(com) lo 1 1 One solution is to cascade the converters to reach the desired
ItL -So 'SOItL 0tL'SO step-up ratio of 8 to 10:1. Alternatively, full-bridge
topologies can be used.
Rc 0lo lo lo
| *c N SO |Lc N So Ic N s0 II. INTERLEAVED FULL-BRIDGE DC-DC CONVERTER
(R L(com) + N Rc lo 2.1oo
In this part, we consider interleaving structures that
*c SO FL SO OL
contain a transformer to achieve the desired voltage step-up
So
AiL(com) increased 1 greater than 4. The principle of operation can be analysed
1
AhL(independant) under steady state conditions and shown to be similar to the
2
previous circuit topologies without transformer, hence we
Figure 7 illustrates simulation results for the case of three will not present the case of N interleaved structures. Also,
interleaved converters having independent inductances (a) note here that, only voltage-fed full-bridges converters are
combined inductances with [t = It L (b), and combined considered. In fact, current-fed, full-bridge converters need
ItLc the 7highlextra circuitry to make them work properly, otherwise, they
c

inductances with p »> L (C). Figure 7 highlights benefit can be damaged by overvoltages appearing at switching
indctncewtht
Figure

of combining inductances in the same magnetic core. Indeed, instants due to the transformer leakage inductance.
with the same magnetic core between the central and external Additionally, structures with voltage clamping snubbers
columns, we do not change the current ripple seen by the fuel seem to be unsuitable for fuel cell applications because
cell. However, the ripple in each converter level is reduced. power sometimes needs to be reinjected to the supply, which
In the case where different material is used between the is unacceptable for fuel cell systems.
central and external columns, i.e. when the condition of The considered structure is depicted in Figure 8 and
»c >>L is satisfied, the current ripple seen by both the fuel consists of three H-bridge converters, interleaved on the
cell and each converter level is reduced. primary side of each transformer. The transformer secondary
windings are star connected and supply a three phase diode-
'LI 'L2 'L3 bridge rectifier.
will notgetconsiderinsight
To first of the behaviour of the
the leakage inductance of eachstructure,
we
1 V,\ / a T IL *Vl a-T transformer.
L\\ \ \'.,\'\. \ '\\, ind Lind (a) In fact, with the parasitic capacitance of each semi-
conductor, they can avoid apparition of high di/dt. Besides,
they can allow commutation at zero voltage.

v K
~~~~~~~~V
-2xT- 1+
~~~~~~~~_
LX' /\\/'\,//'\ I'''X3
LIRL
(b)K
1 a24
L

K"
FiL.7.2 Individual converter cub2ents (left) and fuel cell cur2en (right).

Fog. 7.tIndiacovertera clurents()ndfuell cowellvcuen(ight) Fig.8.Exampleoirc

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A. Principle of operation III. THREE-PHASE PWM INVERTER-RECTIFIER
Control of the three individual full-bridge converters is STRUCTURE
delayed by 1/3 of the switching period in order to obtain The three-phase PWM inverter-rectifier is depicted in fig.
three-phase balanced (fundamental) voltages. For each 10. In this case a star-star three-phase transformer is used.
converter, phase shift control is adopted. It consists of Two types of control signals can be applied to the power
holding the gate signal of the top switches of one leg on semi-conductors; 1800 conduction (a) or 1200 conduction (b).
during half of the period and delaying the top switches of the The secondary phase voltage obtained for each control
other leg by an angle a, this considered to be the duty cycle schematic is shown in Fig. 11.
of the structure. A complementary control is adopted for
switches situated on the bottom of the structure. Three cases A Inverter switch ratings
arise, depending on the duty cycle. In fact, the phase voltage The maximum current rating of each semi-conductor is
in the secondary side of the transformer has a particular equal to lfc for 1200 conduction control and lfc /2 for 1800
shape depending on the phase shift and hence the DC output conduction. The peak voltage Vp across each semi-conductor
voltage of the rectifier [17], as illustrated in Figure 9, is equal to Vfc in both cases. Hence, the total converter
showing the case for 0< a <.2/3(a), n/3 < a < 2 2r/3 (b), switch rating is given by:
2 .2/3 < a < fC (c). 6 I
The main feature of this configuration is that the voltage VA = fc,k V = 3- Ifc Vfc 180°conduction (10)
can be doubled depending on the duty cycle and hence allow k=l 2 p,k
the use of a transformer with a lower turn ratio. Besides, by 6
choosing appropriate control, the DC inductor L is subject to VA = E I V = 6 -fc* Vfc 120conduction (11)
no current ripple (Fig. 9-c), allowing a reduced size. k=l
B. Inverter switch ratings
For the three cases, the maximum current flowing through L
the semi-conductor is giving by:

Imax 2c
S=2 (8)a v2
lf being the nominal current delivered by the fuel cells. Co
The peak voltage VP across the semi-conductor is equal to H H H
the fuel cell output voltage Vfc. Thus, the total converter
switch rating is then given by:
Fig. 10. Three-phase PWM inverter-rectifier structure.

VA =1A2
, 1 fc,kV
2 Vpk
k12 .

k=1 (9)
= 6Ifc Vp Vs,i
2.n.VfJ3
vn.Vfc/3
Vs3-1V'iVQ ~~~~~~~~VDC
nl.Vrc flK .Vrc
o
/2 '17l^

_ ,_
0
.T/I
l|I

_(01a)_s_7, T
(a)
X /3 X ~~~~~~/6 1 13 '172

2.n.V-c
nl.V~
, vs 1
v

O (b.ratT i I T ) 1 1 f lVf

-n.Vfc X I1I

ll1 13 | | |2 n.Vf, 176 1 /3 '12 VDC T12l || (b)

lla6 v 1 j l1
T
0 >I (c)
-n.Vrc
V Fig. 11. Secondary phase voltages. (a) 1800 conduction. (b) 1200 conduction.

Fig. 9. Simulated voltage waveforms.

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 IV. COMPARISON OF THE STRUCTURES converters allows for boosting of converter the output
The main feature of interleaving basic step-up converters voltage when three individuals transformers are used. It is an
is that it reduces the fuel cell input current ripple according to attractive structure but, for vehicle prototype design has a
the number of basic converters being interleaved. trade-off in terms of core volume. The three-phase PWM
Besides, the volume of each inductance is reduced by the inverter-rectifier improves on transformer volume. Moreover,
number of the interleaved converter compared to one basic with proper control, it allows for lower total installed silicon.
converter. Moreover, when inductances are combined and
with appropriate material, we can further reduce the current
ripple, and gain space. However, the voltage step-up is VI. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
constrained to approximately 4. For a high voltage bus one The authors acknowledge the support of the UK
can use cascaded converters. Engineering and Physical Science Research Council
Another solution is to use structures with a transformer. (EPSRC), via Grant No. GR/S81971/01.
An interleaved, three individual, full-bridge converter has the
advantage of boosting the output voltage by a factor of two
without increasing the transformer turns ratio and with a VII. REFERENCES
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