A trade-off between the efficiency, ripple and volume of a DC-DC converter

Abstract

In space qualified DC-DC converters, optimization of the following electrical characteristics is of greater interest in comparison with other specifications; power loss/efficiency, output voltage ripple and volume/weight. The main goal of this paper is to present an appropriate solution for optimizing the above mentioned characteristics. For this purpose, a comprehensive power loss model of a DC-DC converter is fully developed. Proper models are also demonstrated for assessment of the output voltage ripple and the utilized transformer volume as the bulkiest component in a DC-DC converter. In order to provide a test bed for evaluation of the proposed models, a 50W push-pull DC-DC converter is designed and implemented. Finally, a novel cost function with three assigned weight functions is proposed in order to have a trade-off among the power loss, the output voltage ripple and the utilized transformer volume of the converter. The cost function is optimized for applications in which volume has the highest priority in comparison with power loss and ripple. The optimization results show that the transformer volume can be decreased by up to 51% and this result is verified by experimental results. The developed models and algorithms in this paper can be used for other DC-DC converter topologies with some minor modifications.