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Virginia Tech

Optimal Design of MHz LLC Converter for 48V Bus Converter Application

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

The intermediate bus architecture employing the 48V bus converter is one of the most popular power architecture. 48V to 12V bus converter has wide applications in telecommunications, networks, aerospace, and military, etc. However, today's state of the art products has low power rating or power density and becomes difficult to satisfy the demand of increasing power of the loads. To improve the current design, a GaN (Gallium Nitride) based two-stage solution is proposed for the bus converter. The first stage Buck converter regulates the 40V to 60V variable input to a fixed 36V bus voltage. The second stage LLC converter convert the 36V to 12V by a 3:1 transformer. The whole solution achieves the fixed frequency control. The thesis focus on the detail design and optimization of LLC converter, especially its transformer. To have high density and high efficiency, the transformer design becomes critical at MHz frequency. The matrix transformer concept is applied and a merged winding structure is used for flux cancellation, which effectively reduces the AC winding losses. A new fully interleaved termination and via design is proposed. It achieves significant reduction in loss and leakage flux. In addition, to study the current sharing of parallel winding layers, a 1-D analytic model is proposed and a symmetrical winding layer scheme is used to balance the current distribution. The hardware is built and tested. The proposed two-stage converter achieves the best performance compared to the current market.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Master of Science
Level thesis:degree_level
masters
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Electrical Engineering
Department dc:contributor.department
Electrical Engineering
Grantor dc:publisher
Virginia Tech
Year dc:date.issued
2019

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Cai, Yinsong
Chair dc:contributor.committeechair
  • Li, Qiang
Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember
  • Lee, Fred C.
  • Zhang, Yuhao

Subjects

dc:subject × 4

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • In Copyright

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Dc Identifier Other
vt_gsexam:22127
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/93582

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
Virginia Tech
Base URL
vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Cai, Yinsong. Optimal Design of MHz LLC Converter for 48V Bus Converter Application. masters thesis, Virginia Tech, 2019. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/93582