Suppression of Line Frequency Instabilities in PFC AC-DC Power Supplies by Feedback Notch Filtering the Pre-Regulator Output Voltage

Due to nonlinear effects, Power Factor Correction (PFC) ac-dc converters working in Continuous Conduction Mode (CCM) can exhibit nonlinear phenomena such as subharmonic oscillations and chaotic regimes at the line frequency. These undesirable behaviors increase the Total Harmonic Distortion (THD) and shift the dc input line current to non null values. This results in a malfunctioning of the system or even damages caused by the increase of the temperature which can jeopardize enormously the performances and shorten the lifetime of the system. In order to avoid these problems, subharmonic line frequency instabilities must be suppressed. In this paper, a selective notch filter based controller is combined with the output voltage compensator to suppress these instabilities and to stabilize a two-stage PFC ac-dc converter. A frequency domain analysis is used to explain the control mechanism of directing subharmonic and chaotic oscillations into stable periodic motion. A detailed study of the effect of this selective filter on the dynamical behavior of the system is presented. A simple harmonic model is used to obtain the control stability domain. This control technique is simple and allows widening the stability domain and improving the performances of the system being its experimental implementation possible using standard devices such as OAs and passive elements. The correctness of the proposed technique is verified with numerical simulations and experimental measurements.