A Novel Soft Starting Strategy of An LLC Resonant

DC/DC Converter for Plug-in Hybrid Electric

Vehicles
Wei Guo, Kevin (Hua) Bai, Allan Taylor

Jeff Patterson, James Kane

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Kettering University
Flint, MI 48504, USA
Email: hbai@kettering.edu

Magna E-Car USA LP

1955 Enterprise Drive
Rochester Hills, MI 48309, USA

Abstract- Usually a high-efficiency Level 1~2 battery charger

consists of an AC/DC (PFC) part and a DC/DC part, which in
this paper is a CoolMOS based 97%-efficiency full-bridge
LLC resonant DC/DC converter. Due to the existence of the
output capacitance and high input voltage (usually 400VDC),
the inrush current of the DC/DC converter in the starting
process is inevitable, which requires an effective soft starting
strategy. This paper proposed an effective soft starting
strategy to gradually charge the output capacitor, decrease
the inrush current and, more importantly, avoid the hard
switching in the starting process, which is a must to the
CoolMOS. The proposed starting strategy has been
experimentally validated on a 10kW LLC resonant DC/DC
converter.

Cr and the reflected excitation inductance Lm of the

transformer. In order to realize the ZVS of the four
MOSFETs on the primary H-bridge, the whole system
needs be operated at the switching frequency between
f1 and f 2 , where

f1 =

Z = jLr +

Fast electric chargers with high efficiency and compact

design are highly demanded for electric vehicles (EVs) and
plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs). For a regular
Level 1 or Level 2 battery charger, it normally comprises of
one AC/DC rectifier, which is also known as power factor
correction (PFC), and one DC/DC converter to transform
the DC to other voltage charging the batteries. In order to
reach high-frequency and highefficiency operation,
adopting the soft-switched CoolMOS is now one of the
major trends in the automotive industry, e.g., LLC resonant
for full-bridge DC/DC converter [1,2] shown in Fig.1. The
essence of LLC resonant is softly turning on the CoolMOS
therefore softly turning-off its body diode, which represents
the zero-voltage-switching (ZVS) to minimize the reverse
recovery loss of the body diode and MOSFET turn-on loss.

Co

Q2

1
2 ( Lr + Lm )C r

(1)

1
+ jLm // R
jCr

(2)

Changing fs will alter the overall system impedance

therefore change the charging power. Working at lower fs
will lead to the higher charging power. Here f2=100kHz
and f1=185kHz.
Before starting the converter to charge the battery, the
output voltage across Co is zero. Directly imposing a 50%duty-cycled AC square waveform through the primary Hbridge will bring the inrush current to the system, which
could trigger the over-current protection and damage the
MOSFET. This is true even when the switching frequency
is higher than 150kHz. One of the possible solutions is the
phase-shift control [3~5], which will make the system lose
the ZVS, cause the high reverse recovery current of its
body diode and bring the EMI to the control system.
Therefore a new soft starting strategy maintaining the softswitching characteristics is an inward search.

Vo

Q4

II. SOFT STARTING STRATEGY

Fig.2 (a) simulates the in-rush current without any soft
starting when Vin= 400V and fs=160kHz. Maximum inrush current is 450A, far beyond the current rating of most
presently existing MOSFETs. Here V(Va, Vb) is the
bridge output voltage, V(out) is the output voltage across
Co and I(C2) is the primary H-bridge output current.

Fig. 1. Full-bridge LLC DC/DC Converter

More specifically, this could be realized through

designing the passive components in Fig.1, e.g., the
resonant leakage inductance Lr, the resonant capacitance

978-1-4673-4355-8/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE

f2 =

R(1 2 ( Lm + Lr )Cr ) + jLm (1 2 Lr Cr )

=
jCr ( R + jLm )

Q3

V in

and

The overall impedance reflected to the H-bridge side is

shown as (2) where R is the reflected load. Here
2 [ f 2 , f1 ]

I. INTRODUCTION

Q1

1
2 Lr C r

2012

Simulation in Fig. 3(a) shows that with the proposed

soft starting the maximum starting current is only around
50A, in contrast to >100A at direct full-bridge starting
mode shown in Fig.3(c) when switching frequency is
230kHz. From Fig.3(b), the bridge output current is still
negative when bridge voltage changes to positive, i.e.,
ZVS is maintained.

Fig.2(b) uses phase-shift control, i.e., employing the phase

shift between two legs of the primary H-bridge to generate
very narrow voltage pulse. The in-rush current (20A)
significantly decreases, however when CoolMOS turns on
there is no more ZVS, which leads to the hard switching of
the CoolMOS body diode. This reverse recovery current
could be very high especially for those CoolMOS with low
on-state resistance, which will generate the noise to the
control system.

(a) direct starting (fs=160kHz)

(a)

proposed soft-starting (simulation)

Turn on time

(b) soft-starting with phase-shift control (simulation)

Fig.2. Comparison of different starting strategies.

The proposed soft-starting strategy in this paper is

1) At the starting stage, make the full-bridge LLC
converter work at half-bridge LLC mode, i.e., Q3 in Fig.1
is forced off and Q4 is forced on. Q1 and Q2 are switched at
high frequency with a 50% duty cycle and complementary
to each other. So the bridge output is a square waveform
changing between zero and Vin (defined as half-bridge
model) instead between Vin and Vin (defined as fullbridge mode). This is shown as V(Va, Vb) in Fig.3(a);

(b) proposed soft starting (simulation, zoomed in)

2) Once the output voltage is charged up, switch the

half-bridge mode to full-bridge mode, i.e., Q1~Q4 are all
switched to generate Vin square waveform. In this
process, the system will output the regular square
waveforms and decrease the switching frequency to charge
the output capacitor to higher voltage;
3) If needed, a phase shift slightly less than 180o
between two legs is employed. This phase-shift will help
further decrease the starting current however should not let
the COOLMOS go to the hard switching;

(c) Peak current comparison (full-bridge direct start vs proposed softstarting) (simulation at 230kHz)

4) Connect the Co with the battery once their voltage

is equal to each other.

Fig.3 proposed soft-starting strategy

2013

III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

Fig.4(a) shows the hardware test bench. This is a 10kW
DC/DC converter with 97% efficiency at Vo=250V~400V.
The input voltage is a constant 400VDC. Detailed
parameters could be found in [6]. Fig.4(b)~(f) are different
starting strategies.

(d) Vin=400V, fs=230kHz, proposed soft starting (for (d), light blue:
input DC-bus voltage, yellow: H-bridge output voltage, green: bridge
output current, purple red: output voltage)

(a)

Test bench

(e) proposed soft-starting in half-bridge mode

(b) Vin=70V, fs=150kHz, direct starting, Imax=56.7A

(f) proposed soft-starting in full-bridge mode

Fig. 4. Experimental comparison of direct starting and proposed soft
starting

(c) Vin=200V, fs=200kHz, direct starting, Imax=100A

Fig.4 (b)~(c) are direct starting. Even when Vin has

been decreased to 70V or 200V, respectively, the large
inrush current still emerges. Once Vin goes to 400V, the

2014

system will for sure undertake the high in-rush current. In

Fig. 4 (d) with the proposed starting algorithm, the peak
current is less than 47A when Vin=400V and fs=230kHz.
Fig.4(e) and (f) are the zoomed-in waveform shown in (d).
ZVS is always kept in both half-bridge mode and fullbridge mode since voltage (yellow) is always leading to
the current (green). Experiments validated the simuation.
IV. CONCLUSION
For the CoolMOS based DC/DC converter, ZVS is
usually required to eliminate the reverse recovery loss of
its body diode to realize the high-efficiency operation.
This is not only true for the steady state, but also for the
transient state due to the potential EMI brought by the big
reverse recovery current in the hard switching mode. In
this paper, a novel soft starting strategy for a 10kW LLC
DC/DC converter is proposed to successfully decrease the
in-rush current. This algorithm has been validated by
experiments when Vin=400V. Compared to other starting
algorithms, the proposed strategy has low starting inrush
current and maintains the soft-switching (ZVS) in all the
starting process, which is beneficial for any CoolMOS
based bridge converter.
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