Development of a new snubber circuit for switching converters

Abstract

A new energy recovery snubber is proposed on a project to reduce the switching loss, the energy stored in the snubber circuit will be recovered to the load in the successive turnoff stage. The snubber is providing soft switching for both turn-on and turn-off. The passive components, capacitor, in snubber acts as energy storage elements for a temporary storage and the energy return to load via a diode. A 48V to 12V, 50W DC-DC buck boost converter is an example for demonstrating the snubber circuit. The operation principle and theoretical analysis in details is shown in the paper through the circuit simulation. A set of loading, from 10W to 60W light bulb, is used to measure the converter efficiency. A comparative study of hard switching, switching with RCD snubber and with the proposed snubber is done. When compare with hard switching, the converter efficiency can be increased with the proposed snubber