Design and Placement of a Passive Clamp Snubber for Isolated SEPIC and Cuk Converters Working as Automatic Power Factor Correctors

  1. López Antuña, Abraham 1
  2. Rodríguez Méndez, Juan 1
  3. Murillo Yarce, Duberney 1
  4. Sebastián Zúñiga, Francisco Javier 1
  5. González Lamar, Diego 1
  1. 1 Universidad de Oviedo
    info

    Universidad de Oviedo

    Oviedo, España

    ROR https://ror.org/006gksa02

Proceedings:
2025 IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC)

Publisher: IEEE

Year of publication: 2025

Congress: Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (40th. 2025. Atlanta, USA)

Type: Conference paper

GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openRUO editor HANDLE: https://hdl.handle.net/10651/78222
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Abstract

DC/DC power converters with galvanic isolationand using only one power transistor need elements that limit thevoltage peaks at the beginning of the transistor turn off. Theseelements are called clamp snubbers. Its placement and design arewell known for power converters with two reactive elements (e.g.flyback). However, different placements can be considered forthose clamp snubbers in converters with higher number of reactiveelements. Moreover, if the converter works as a Resistor Emulator(RE) in a Power Factor Corrector (PFC), the snubber must takeinto account the continuous variation of some of the electricalvariables. This paper presents the study of four differentplacements for a passive clamp snubber network in a SEPICconverter working as an automatic RE, i.e., working in theDiscontinuos Conduction Mode (DCM) and with a constant dutycycle during a line period. The value of the clamp snubber resistorneeded to achieve a specific clamp voltage for these four options isdetermined in this paper. Moreover, the four options arecompared in terms of the dissipated power in the snubber resistor.Consequently, it is possible to determine which one is going to bethe best snubber option, in terms of efficiency. This study has beencarried out for a SEPIC topology, and it is also valid for the Cukone. Finally, all the study developed in this paper has beenvalidated considering PSIM simulations and experimental resultsusing a SEPIC prototype working as an automatic PFC.

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Funding information

This work has been carried out by funding from the Asturias governmentthrough the SV-PA-21-AYUD/2021/51931 project, and from the Spanishgovernment through the PID2022-136969OB-I00, PID2021-127707OB-C21,MCINN-22-TED2021-130939B-I00 and MCINN-23-PID2022-136969OB-I00projects.

Funders

  • Gobierno del Principado de Asturias Spain
    • SV-PA-21-AYUD/2021/51931
  • Gobierno de España Spain
    • PID2022-136969OB-I00
  • Gobierno de España Spain
    • PID2021-127707OB-C21
  • Gobierno de España Spain
    • MCINN-22-TED2021-130939B-I00
  • Gobierno de España Spain
    • MCINN-23-PID2022-136969OB-I00