Analysis and design of an improved series resonant inverter for heating applications

Abstract

Induction Heating (IH) is a method used for heating of electrically conductive materials. In this method, the heat is produced by the eddy currents generated in the material. It has many advantages compared with other heating systems such as quicker heating, faster start-up, and high energy saving. Since Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction, this phenomenon has been widely studied in many applications. newlinePower electronics innovation has made a significant contribution to the advancement of IH technology. The inverter is the heart of IH topology. The eddy current production required for IH is derived from an inverter that converts fixed frequency, fixed voltage quantities to variable voltage and variable frequency. The magnitude of the eddy current is directly proportional to the frequency fluctuation. Because eddy current is proportional to frequency, the frequency for IH is normally set higher than 20 kHz to avoid audible noise and can reach 1 MHz depending on the application. newlineIn an IH system, various types of PWM converters and inverter topologies were used. The power electronic switches subjected to voltage /current stress during switching, results in increased switching loss. Hence, this work formulated a resonant inverter to reduce the switching losses over IH. newline