Design and analysis of a novel coupled converter with high‐voltage insulation protection in magnetic isolated way

Abstract

This paper presents a novel coupled converter with high-voltage insulation protection in magnetic isolated way by taking the case of heater/ignitor/keeper supply for powering discharge cathode in the space ion electric propulsion (EP) thruster. The topology, working principle and igniting timing, as well as the adaptive closed-loop control and heatingigniting interlock control are also illustrated. For the proposed converter, the coupled topology and control strategy only adopt three straddling magnetic components to realize all functions. Meanwhile, the number of electronic components suspending over the highvoltage side of beam supply is small enough. Additionally, the test on the coupled converter prototype shows that, the maximum efficiency is 88.6%, close to the traditional tightly coupled supply; the proposed converter could realize the function of heating/igniting/keeping for the discharge cathode under the magnetic isolated way and corresponding control strategy; and there is no "spark phenomenon" for the converter during low-pressure discharge test. Hence, the magnetic isolated way to obtain the physical separation between highvoltage and low-voltage side in the converter is useful to achieve the high-voltage insulation protection.This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.