Four quadrant operation of bidirectional DC-DC converter for light electric vehicles

<p><span>This paper discusses the closed-loop control of a bidirectional full bridge DC-DC converter which aids in the four-quadrant operation of an electric vehicle (EV). Several topologies of bidirectional converters have been recently investigated for optimizing vehicle performance. The bidirectional converters with buck and boost modes of operation aid the four-quadrant operation of drives. The proposed bidirectional converter aids buck and boost modes of operation in both forward and reverse directions of the drive. The buck/boost operation in the forward direction is suitable to operate the traction drive in motoring mode. Also, the buck/boost operation in the reverse direction aids the drive to operate in charging mode. The performance analysis of the bi-directional converter-fed EV drive is done using MATLAB/Simulink software. The different modes of operation of the converter which is utilized for the four-quadrant operation of the drive are validated using a 12-60V hardware prototype. DSP TMS2837D controller is used to control the bi-directional converter and the code generation for the controller is done in MATLAB-DSP integrated platform. The hardware results validate theoretical analysis and simulation studies.</span></p>