Sharif Digital Repository

In this study, a new isolated high-gain switched-boost DC/DC converter employing two symmetrical switched-boost networks along with a modified control algorithm based on the combination of the pulse-width modulation (PWM) and phase-shift modulation is proposed. Utilising symmetrical switched-boost networks increase the voltage gain of the proposed converter, significantly. Moreover, applying the proposed switching algorithm on the proposed isolated switched-boost DC/DC converter leads to the following advantages: (i) high-voltage gain, (ii) zero voltage switching (ZVS) turn-on of two switches, (iii) ZVS turnoff of two switches and (iv) appearing three controllable parameters (the... 

In this study, a new multi-input high step-up inverter, based on isolated soft-switching DC-DC converter blocks is proposed. Each of these blocks can provide zero-voltage and zero-current switching for its semiconductors, which improve power efficiency. The interesting feature of this DC-DC converter is using bidirectional switches to generate both positive and negative output voltage levels in each DC-DC block with an appropriate control scheme. Each DC-DC converter operates by simple pulse width modulation control through fixed frequency and has two degrees of freedom, which provide the capability of output voltage regulation or maximum power point tracking. The proposed inverter consists... 

Measurement of partial discharges (PDs) current pulses is found to be one of the most efficient methods to evaluate the high voltage electrical equipment insulation condition. Generators, transformers, cables and transmission lines are especially tested for the presence of PDs. In AC, the solution is well known. Phase-resolved method can be used to detect and determine partial discharge activities. Although phase-resolved method works well under AC voltage; due to lack of a cyclic variation in DC voltage and current this cannot be used when studying partial discharges in DC voltage systems. Therefore, other methods are employed to interpret the partial discharge in DC. For this purpose, the... 

Wind power generation is increasing fast as a clean renewable energy resource. Offshore wind farms are popular due to advantages such as higher and smoother wind speeds, less farm site limitations, etc. High capacitive currents and need to expensive compensations, make use of high-voltage-direct-current (HVDC) power transmission indispensable for longdistance wind farm power generations. Steady-state and transient performance improvements of HVDC systems have always been an interesting industrial and academic research area. In this paper, a novel control method is proposed to improve the steady-state operation of HVDC system. Moreover, a new fault detection scheme is proposed to improve the... 

A major problem in a multiple output converter structure is the different power flow via its various outputs. This problem leads to unwanted input DC-link voltage. This paper studies full bridge based DC-DC converters with multiple outputs. The effect of power flow variation is studied and a regenerative converter topology which controls the DC-link voltage by space voltage vector modulation technique is proposed. The proposed converter has a fast response to control the DC-link voltage in an acceptable band. Simulation and experimental results are presented to verify the analytical studies. © 2018 IEEE  

A novel high-voltage direct current (HVdc) power supply which has no transformer or voltage multiplier circuit is presented and analyzed in this paper. This is made possible upon the diodes storage delay phenomenon. This proposed power supply is compact, lightweight, and low cost. Its basic structure includes a diode with a proper reverse recovery specification that plays the role of a step-up transformer in the conventional HVdc supplies and a high-voltage capacitor which stabilizes the output voltage. This structure has remarkable advantages over the conventional transformer-based HVdc supplies, such as compactness, a low ripple output, and a low-cost power supply. Performance of the... 

In this paper, a single-inductor dual-output (SIDO) DC/DC converter is proposed. The significant feature of the proposed converter is feeding a constant power load in low voltage side (LVS) port, where even feeding a variable load at LVS doesn't have any cross regulation to high voltage side port with the desired approximation. Magnificently, both merits are obtained in open-loop manner which is an outstanding characteristic in comparison with existed converters. In this paper, soft commutation and soft switching of switches and diodes are investigated along with the aforementioned main novelty. Moreover, detailed theoretical analyses of the proposed SIDO DC/DC converter in continuous... 

Power sharing control among grid forming dc sources employing a conventional voltage droop approach meets inaccurate load sharing and unacceptable voltage regulation performance. Thereby, communication-based secondary and supervisory controllers have been presented to overcome the aforementioned issues. Furthermore, with the aim of eliminating communication system, frequency-based droop approaches have been introduced for low-voltage dc grids where the frequency of the superimposed ac signal onto the dc voltage is proportional to the output power. However, in reality, dc grid structures can be applied to medium and high voltage applications with different X/R ratios. This paper generalizes... 

Power electronics is becoming an underpinning technology for modern power systems. Power converters are increasingly used in various applications implying different levels of importance in power systems. Hence, optimal decision-making for manufacturing, control, operation and maintenance of them requires understanding of their importance in the power systems. Furthermore, identifying the converters importance may be beneficial for simplifying the system-level reliability modeling in a large Power Electronic based Power Systems (PEPSs). Thereby, a Failure Mode, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) approach is proposed in this paper in order to figure out the importance of converters in... 

High-voltage power supplies (HVPSs) are widely used to supply vacuum tubes. The amount of delivered energy from the HVPS to the tube is an important issue during the vacuum arc in the tube. The conventional protection mechanism consists of a shunt crowbar which diverts the fault current from the tube to itself as a parallel path. The crowbar circuit is usually built of the devices without the turn-off capability. It is a drawback since the output of the power supply is shortened for a long time. Thus, the restoration time of these power supplies is excessive. This demerit can have detrimental effects on mission-critical applications. In this paper, the insulated-gate bipolar transistor... 

Short-circuit fault (SCF) detection is mandatory in a high voltage DC power supply (HVPS) to prevent fatal damage. The majority of converters employ a single sensor to detect the SCF. This attribute increases the interference vulnerability of the fault detection (FD) system in the presence of noise. Therefore, miss detections and false alarms are possible to occur. Miss detections and false alarms are harmful catastrophes in most applications. A commonly used method to suppress the noise impacts is using a low-bandwidth low-pass filter. However, the use of the low-bandwidth low-pass filter reduces the speed of FD due to the filter delay. This paper proposes a fast FD algorithm based on... 

Vacuum arc is one of the most important failure factors of the vacuum tubes. The amount of delivered energy from the high-voltage dc power supply to the vacuum tube is an important issue during the vacuum arc in the tube. Vacuum arc acts as a short-circuit fault (SCF) at the power supply output. The majority of converters use a single current sensor to measure only the converter output current for detecting the SCF. However, the sensor may provide unreliable data because of the noise effect. Application of a low-pass filter reduces the noise effect. Regarding the delay of the low-pass filter, the interval of arc detection increases and more energy is delivered to the tube. In this article, a... 

High voltage power supplies are widely used in telecommunication systems. To better utilize these power supplies, voltage should be stabilized at a certain level. In this application, in case of changing voltage, the desired output parameters will change, such as RF output power quality. Various methods have been proposed to stabilize the voltage at acceptable levels. One of the most commonly used methods is use of switching regulators that are considered for high efficiency in comparison with linear regulators. But the use of these regulators also has problems. One of these problems is electromagnetic interference which is very important in telecommunication systems. Therefore, the need for... 

High-voltage power supplies (HVPSs) are widely used to drive vacuum tubes, inherently susceptible to vacuum arc faults. Owing to the considerable cost of vacuum tubes, the HVPS should enjoy a reliable, fast protection mechanism. A common protection mechanism against vacuum arc faults is the shunt crowbar. The crowbar diverts the energy stored in the elements of the HVPS through itself as a parallel path, thereby protecting vacuum tubes from irrecoverable damages. Among all types of the shunt crowbar, the thyristor-based crowbar along with the fault current limiter (FCL) resistors attracts more attention because of its more reliable operation. The absence of the comprehensive design procedure... 

Applying series configuration of the insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs) to the pulsed power supplies offers unique features such as compactness and long life time. In the high-voltage pulsed power supplies, a large number of the IGBTs are required to be serially connected. Hence, the safe operating condition provision for the series IGBTs is an important and crucial issue. The effect of the voltage unbalancing factors becomes remarkable when the number of switches in the series structure increases. There are passive and active methods to balance the voltage of the series IGBTs. In both of these methods, an amount of power must be dissipated to remove the effect of the voltage... 

This article proposes a high-voltage fault current limiter (HVFCL) for high-voltage dc power supplies (HVdcPSs) which limits the current of the power supply automatically in the short-circuit fault (SCF). The proposed HVFCL is based on the series-connected insulated gate bipolar transistors (IGBTs). The main achievements of this article are the balanced voltage sharing and a very low value of the short-circuit current near to the load nominal current for the series-connected IGBTs during the SCF. These achievements result in a longer maximum permissible short-circuit time. These achievements are obtained by a control strategy that puts the series-connected IGBTs in a specific operating point... 

Vacuum arc is one of the most important failure factors of the vacuum tubes. The amount of delivered energy from the high-voltage dc power supply to the vacuum tube is an important issue during the vacuum arc in the tube. Vacuum arc acts as a short-circuit fault (SCF) at the power supply output. The majority of converters use a single current sensor to measure only the converter output current for detecting the SCF. However, the sensor may provide unreliable data because of the noise effect. Application of a low-pass filter reduces the noise effect. Regarding the delay of the low-pass filter, the interval of arc detection increases and more energy is delivered to the tube. In this article, a... 

Optimal probabilistic neural network-based method has been porposed in this paper to identify different types of fault in high voltage direct current (HVDC) system. Probabilistic neural network is a type of artificial neural networks capable of approximating the optimal classifier. The particle swarm optimization is porposed to achive an optimal value of smoothing factor for PNN which is an important parameter. The main purpose of this paper is fast and accurate fault classification, for this purpose simple HVDC system has been evaluated under various fault type condition to examine the efficacy of the proposed method. The performance of the proposed method is investigated using... 

In this research, full density, single phase microstructure (in the XRD and SEM detection limits), and fine-grained SnO2 varistors with an average grain size of 0.65 μm was acquired at low temperature by the two-step sintering technique. The sintering temperature was successfully decreased from 1300 °C in the normal sintering to 1150 °C and 1100 °C of respectively the first and the second stage in the two-step sintering. The mechanism of grain growth suppression of the two-step sintered samples was discussed and it was suggested that in addition to triple point junction, solute drag and/or nano-secondary phases contribute to cease the grain growth. These SnO2 varistors exhibited ultra-high... 

The effect of electrostatic field on the aggregation rate and aggregate size of asphaltene particles precipitated from three different crude oil samples suspended in a mixture of toluene and n-heptane (a model oil) was investigated. An electrode-embedded glass micro-model utilizing a high-voltage direct current power supply was utilized in this study. The asphaltene particle size and the rate of aggregation under the electric field were monitored using a high-resolution optical microscope and the average aggregate size for asphaltene particles was estimated using image processing software. To investigate the effects of structural parameters on asphaltene aggregation rate, aggregate size and...