Abstract
This paper is studied on a novel power factor correction (PFC) AC-DC converter of high efficiency by soft switching technique. The input current waveform in the proposed converter is got to be a sinusoidal form composed of many a discontinuous pulse in proportion to the magnitude of a ac input voltage under the constant switching frequency. Therefore, the input power factor is nearly unity and the control method is simple. The proposed converter adding an electric isolation operates with a discontinuous current mode (DCM) of the reactor in order to obtain some merits of simpler control, such as fixed switching frequency, without synchronization control circuit used in continuous current mode (CCM). To achieve the soft switching (ZCS or ZVS) of control devices, the converter is constructed with a new loss-less snubber for a partial resonant circuit. It is that the switching losses are very low and the efficiency of the converter is high, Particularly, the stored energy in a loss-less snubber capacitor recovers into input side and increases input current from a resonant operation. The result is that the input power factor of the proposed converter is higher than that of a conventional PFC converter. This paper deals mainly with the circuit operations, theoretical, simulated and experimental results of the proposed PFC AC-DC converter in comparison with a conventional PFC AC-DC converter.
