Interleaved Active Clamp Forward Converter With Extended Operating Duty Ratio by Adopting Additional Series-Connected Secondary Windings for Wide Input and High Current Output Applications

Abstract

This paper presents a new interleaved active clamp forward converter for low and wide input, and high current output applications. In the proposed converter, the operating duty ratio can be extended over 0.5 due to the additional powering path resulting from additional series-connected secondary windings from each transformer. As a result, the proposed converter can be designed with large transformer turns ratio. Thus, since the proposed converter can reduce not only the primary RMS current but also switch turn-off current, it can achieve high efficiency. Moreover, since all secondary switches can operate without floating gate drivers, the proposed converter can maintain simple structure and low complexity of gate driving circuits in the secondary side. The validity of this proposed converter is verified by the experimental results from 36V–72\xa0V input and 12\xa0V/500\xa0W output for the dc/dc prototype.