Pulsed Power Technology
Design and Construction of 30 kV Capacitor Charger Using of Series
Resonant Converter1
H.R. Hafezi, S.J. Mousavi, M. Barati, and M.H. Rahdan
Electronic and Communication Research Center, Majdzadeh, Tehran, 1355874541, I.R. IRAN
Phone: +98 (021) 55765748, E-mail:h_r_hafezi@yahoo.com
Abstract – A power supply specifically designed for
capacitor-charging applications that uses a series-
resonant circuit topology, a constant on-
time/variable frequency control scheme, and zero-
current switching techniques has been developed.
The CCPS is based on a series load resonant topol-
ogy and uses IGTBs as switching devices. The
CCPS differs from conventional power supplies in
that capacitor charging requires operation over a
wide range of load conditions (varying from nearly
short-circuit when the capacitor has no charge to
nearly open-circuit when the capacitor is almost
fully charged). This kind of performance can be
best achieved by supplying a constant charging
current: the instantaneous output power then is
minimal at the charge beginning and maximum at
the charge end. The performance of this capacitor-
charging power supply (CCPS) has been evaluated
in the laboratory by charging several values of load
capacitance at various repetition rates. The CCPS
has charged a 40 nF capacitor from 0 to 30 kV DC
in 9 ms, exhibiting a charging power of 2000 J/s.
This operation has been repeated at a rate of 100
charges per second. These results indicate that this
design is feasible for use in capacitor-charging ap-
plications.
1. Introduction
Interest in rep-rate operation of pulsed power systems
has led to an increase in power requirements of high
voltage (HV) capacitor charging power supplies
(CCPS).
The requirements for a power supply charging the
capacitor are severe
The main requirements for these applications
should be as follow:
• Charging voltage regulated up to few kV.
• Charging time as low as few ms.
• The capability of withstanding short circuit con-
ditions.
The turn-on and the turn-off losses of the switch-
ing devices are significantly high in converters with
PWM (Pulse-Width Modulation) control. The disad-
vantages of
PWM control can be eliminated or minimized if
the switching devices are turned “on” and “off” when
the voltage across the devices and/or their current is
zero. The voltage and the current are forced to pass
through zero by an LC-resonant circuit. The series
1
The work was supported by Electronic and Communication Research Center under Contract No. 34Etr76J.
296
resonant inverters are based on resonant current oscil-
lation. The capacitor-charging power supply utilizes a
series resonant “H” bridge topology. [1–3] The operat-
ing frequency is typically in the range of 40 to 60 kHz.
This topology is inherently short circuit proof because
of the high source impedance it presents to the output
circuit.
The CCPS differs from conventional power sup-
plies in that capacitor charging requires operation over
a wide range of load conditions (varying from nearly
short-circuit when the capacitor has no charge to
nearly open-circuit when the capacitor is almost fully
charged). This kind of performance can be best
achieved by supplying a constant charging current: the
instantaneous output power then is minimal at the
charge beginning and maximum at the charge end.
Three types of resonant inverter topologies are
usually used for CCPS; series-resonant circuit, parallel
resonant circuit and series-parallel resonant circuit.
Due to its simple circuit topology and control system,
excellent short circuit proof capability and constant-
current characteristic is obtained. The series resonant
circuit was adopted in CCPS [1–3]. This paper de-
scribes the design and experimental results of the
CCPS.
2. System description
The whole system is realized by a simple combination
of the desired number of HV modules that may be
connected both in series or parallel. The difficulty to
reliably control a single 30 kV/2 KJ/s module in addi-
tion to the associated high voltage insulation problems
forced us to use two modules of 15 kV/1 kJ/s in series.
The simple schematic of a CCPS is presented in
Fig. 1.
As seen in the Fig. 1 the CCPS includes four basic
modules: input power module, inverter module, high-
voltage output module, and control module.
The AC input section includes an EMI filter, an in-
rush current-limit circuit, a rectifier, and filter capaci-
tors. When the AC power is energized, a high inrush
surge during the charging period of the input capaci-
tors is prevented by the inrush current-limiting circuit.
The rectifier and the filter provide a stable DC voltage
to the inverter section. The AC/DC converter includes
Series of Resonance Converters. Also, the high-
voltage tank consists of a high-frequency transformer,
multiple full-wave bridges, and voltage and current
monitoring circuits.
 Oral Session

Fig. 1. Simplified block diagram of the CCPS

3. Principle of series resonance converter (SRC) 2

⎛N ⎞
ĆL  ⎜ 2 ⎟ CL .
⎝ N1 ⎠
Figure 2 shows the circuit diagram of SRC.

Usually in high-voltage applications ĆL is at least

one order of magnitude greater than Cr. Therefore, it
can be neglected:
1
Ceq   Cr .
1 1
 '
Cr CL
Therefore Z0 and f0 are extracted by Cr and Lr. Op-
erating the circuit at the frequency fs < f0/2, all switches
and anti-parallel diodes turn on and off at zero current.
Fig. 2. Simplified block diagram of SRC Therefore switching losses are reduced to a minimum
The characteristic impedance Z0 of the bridge load and no snubbers are required.
is given by:
4. Simulation of SRC with commercial circuit
L analysis programs
Z0  ,
Ceq Operation of SRC can be accurately simulated through
the commercial circuit analysis programs (Fig. 3). As
and its resonance frequency f0 can be considered as it can be seen from the simulation results (Fig. 4) the
1 current flowing in the series- resonant load Cr and Lr is
f0  , a series of sinusoids and switches are commutated
2 LCeq
when the currents are zero. The charging voltage of
where Ceq is the series combination of capacitors ĆL capacitor increases at the constant rate (Fig. 5) while
and Cr, in which ĆL is the equivalent value of CL the pulsed charging current average value is constant
transferred to the primary: during all cycles.

V1 = 0 V1 = 0
V2 = 5 V6 S5 V2 = 5 V7 S6
TD = 0 + +
D9 TD = 10u + +
D10
TR = 1n - -
TR = 1n - -
V11 TF = 1n GND1 Dbreak TF = 1n GND1 Dbreak C6 L3 34uH D18 D20
Sbreak Sbreak
PW = 5u PW = 5u 1 2 TX3 Dbreak Dbreak
31.1 Vdc PER = 20u PER = 20u
70nf
C5
V1 = 0 V1 = 0
V2 = 5 V8 S7 V2 = 5 V9 S8 R3 40n
TD = 10u + +
D11 TD = 0 + +
D12 D17
TF = 1n - -
TR = 1n - - Dbreak
GND1 GND1 1m
TR = 1n Dbreak TF = 1n Dbreak K528T500_3C8 D19
Sbreak Sbreak
PW = 5u PW = 5u Dbreak
PER = 20u PER = 20u L1_TURNS = 10

GND1 L2_TURNS = 400 0

0
0
Fig. 3. Circuit simulation of SRC

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 Pulsed Power Technology

The characteristic impedance Z0 of the bridge load is:

Lr 34uH
Z0    22,
Ceq 70nF
Vin V 400
I0     in   18 A.
Z0 Lr 22
Ceq
It should be noted that in the beginning of charge
process the current flow through the IGBTs is I0.On
the contrary, at the end of the charge process due to
the energy accumulated in the resonant load (i.e. Cr
and Lr) load current increases up to 2I0:
Time
Iswitch  2 I0  2 18  36 A.
Fig. 4. Simulated waveform of the SRC
The full-bridge inverter is composed of four
IGBTs (IRG4PH50UD, 1200 V-42 A-200 kHz) manu-
factured by International rectifier.

5.1. High voltage transformer

In the series resonant circuit, the stray inductance of
the high voltage transformer is the resonant induc-
tance (Lr). High frequency requires a small, high per-
meability cores (e.g. ferrite cores) and twisted winding
topology. Wounding of primary and secondary on two
different legs of the core lets us to make a better insu-
lation capability between high voltage and low voltage
sections. According to above statements the parame-
ters of interested transformer are listed in Table 2.
Table 2. Transformer requirements
Time
Symbol Parameter Value
Fig. 5. Simulation waveform of series resonance V1 Primary Voltage 400 V
V2 Secondary Voltage 15 kV
5. SRC design I1 Primary RMS Current 4A
The required parameters of the CCPS are summarized I2 Secondary RMS Current 200 mA
in Table 1. f Switching frequency 50 kHz
L1 Primary leakage inductance 34 uH
Table 1. Parameters of the CCPS
The primary is composed of three windings of 11
DC input voltage 400 Vdc turns each connected in parallel to minimize skin ef-
Peak power 2 kW fect losses. The secondary is composed of a single
Output voltage 30 kV winding of 400 turns. The core of the transformer is
Capacitance 40 nF two U-shape ferrite cores (Type U103). In Fig. 6 the
Charging time 9 ms
high voltage transformer is shown.
Switching frequency 50 kHz

The working frequency of the inverter of the serial

resonant circuit is set at 50 kHz. The resonant induc-
tance of 34 μH is the stray inductance of the high volt-
age transformer. The capacitance of the resonant ca-
pacitor can be calculated by:
f0 = 2fs ⇒ f0 = 2  50 kHz = 100 kHz.
1
f0  ⇒ Cr 
2 Lr Cr
1
  70nf .
4  34uH  100kHz 
2 2
Fig. 6. High voltage transformer

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C. High voltage full-bridge rectifier
The full-bridge rectifier is composed of 60 fast recov-
ery diodes (BYT43M) rated at 1000 V/1 A. Each
bridge arm is composed of 15 diodes in series. The
rectifier is merged in oil beside the transformer. Fig. 7
shows the full-bridge rectifier.
Fig. 7. Full-bridge rectifier
6. Experimental results
Experiments were carried out to test the performance
of the CCPS (Fig. 8). The experimental setup is shown
in Fig. 9.
Fig. 8. Charging waveform for a 40 nF capacitor at 30 kV
and 9 ms charging time
Fig. 9. Experimental setup
The charging experiment was carried out on 18 J
by a 40 nF capacitor bank. The prototype inverter
power supply linearly proves its performance by
charging a 40 nf capacitor bank up to 30 kV in a 9 ms.
The average output current is 200 mA with original
299
voltage of 400 V. The obtained peak-charging rate is
2 kJ/s.
Figure 10 shows the resonant current waveform in
details at the beginning of the charge process. The
resonant frequency is 50 kHz and the peak resonant
current is 26 A.
Fig. 10. Resonant circuit current waveforms
7. Conclusion
The series resonant inverter power supply is designed
and constructed for the capacitor charging applica-
tions. The performance of this capacitor-charging
power supply (CCPS) has been evaluated in the labo-
ratory by charging several values of capacitance load
at various repetition rates. The CCPS has charged a
40 nF capacitor up to 30 kV DC in 9 ms, exhibiting a
charging power of 2000 J/s. Future works will needed
to improve the system efficiency to reduce the charg-
ing time, burst mode charging , and higher charging
voltages.
References
[1] Heqing Zhong, Zhixin Xu, Xudong Zou et al.,
“Current Characteristic of High Voltage Capaci-
tor Charging Power Supply Using a Series Reso-
nant Topology”, in Proc. of the 29th Annual Con-
ference of Industrial Electronics Societythe, V. 1,
2–6 Nov, 2003, pp. 373–377.
[2] A.C. Lippincott, R.M. Nelms, M. Garbi, and
E. Strickland, “A series resonant converter with
constant on-time control for capacitor charging
applications”, in Proc. of 5th Annual Conf. and
Exposition APEC '90, 1990, pp. 147–154.
1990, Fifth Annual 11–16 March 1990,
pp. 147–154.
[3] M.M. McQuage, V.P. McDowell, F.E. Peterkin,
and J.A. Pasour, “High Power Density Capacitor
Charging Power Supply Development for Repeti-
tive Pulsed Power”, presented at the Power Modu-
lator Symp., 2006.