CAREER: Unified Design Framework for Advanced Power Electronics

University Of Tennessee Knoxville, Knoxville TN

Investigators

Abstract

ABSTRACT Power electronics are ubiquitous in the modern technological age. They enable battery-powered mobile electronics, energy-efficient lighting, high-performance electric vehicles, renewable energy, advanced medical technologies, and prolific computational power in the smart home. By 2030, 80% of all electricity in the United States will be processed through at least one power converter. In consumer applications, power is often processed through five or more functionally disparate converters, each of which is individually designed for the target application. Rapid advances in constituent technologies, circuit topologies, and control schemes have enabled high-performance and high-efficiency in many applications, but require considerable dedication of design effort to achieve. The goal of this research is to develop the fundamental knowledge and centralized resources necessary to bridge the gap between current approaches to the design of power conversion technologies and true, formal design optimization techniques. In order to promulgate new approaches to the design and application of power conversion, the project integrates the research program with education developments that seek to broaden participation and effectively train the future generation of power electronics engineers. Research products will be incorporated into the curriculum at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and into pre-college outreach and engineering discovery events. At all levels, the education program emphasized hands-on design-oriented experiences to engage participants. The design of high-performance power electronics is a complex interplay of nonlinearities, approximations, intuition, and prototype/revision cycles. Attempts at optimization are limited due to the inherent complexity of the design and performance spaces. The former is high constrained, containing both continuous and discrete, ordered and unordered dimensions. The latter is multi-objective and highly non-convex. This project advances the state-of-the art in converter analysis and modeling, facilitating the application of formal design optimization techniques for greater design capabilities and achievable performance. The approach leverages a framework developed from techniques in nonlinear element modeling, reduced-order converter modeling, and switching analysis of power converters. By integrating these efforts, while creating an open-source characterization repository, the developed techniques will allow computationally efficient and highly accurate design and modeling of power converters, significantly advancing the state of the field. The result will be a new analytical framework that allows designers to rapidly select topology, operating mode, semiconductor and passive devices, and switching functions which will achieve maximal performance in a given application. The framework is developed to retain designer engagement, allowing for shorter design cycles, while providing the tools to allow a greater level of achievable design optimization.