A New DC/DC Converter with Wide-Range ZVS and Reduced Circulating Current

A new three-level dc/dc converter is proposed in this paper. The outstanding features of this converter are that it operates with zero-voltage-switching (ZVS) from full-load to near no-load conditions with hardly any circulating freewheeling primary current due to its novel structure. Since the converter has little primary circulating current and its switches are exposed to only half of the input voltage, it has high efficiency even under light loads. In this paper, the new converter is introduced, its basic operating principles are explained, its modes of operation and its steady-state characteristics are discussed in detail as is its design, and experimental results obtained from a prototype converter that confirm its feasibility are presented.