This project investigates the newly proposed Belgian Rectifier, a novel three-phase boost power factor correction rectifier which is advantageous for AC-to-DC conversion in applications, such as, off-board and on-board chargers for electric vehicles. The Belgian rectifier can achieve very high levels of efficiency
and power density, while its components endure much lower stress than in other rectifier topologies.
The capacitive midpoint produces a three-level voltage over the switches and inductors, therefore a number of advantages can be pointed out such as low stress of the MOSFETs, low magnetic energy requirement for the inductors and low EMI filtering. Two modulation schemes have been analyzed with regard to component stresses and soft switching and one of them is proposed. The modulation scheme derivation is followed by a full analysis of the converter that consists of steady-state modelling, dynamic closed-loop modelling, component loss and volume modelling. In addition, by sweeping through different
parameters in the aforementioned models, a Pareto-front in the efficiency versus power density performance space is created. Thereby, an optimal design can be picked out using multi-objective optimization. Finally, a comparison between the Belgian Rectifier and Six-Switch Rectifier is done to reveal the advantages and disadvantages of the former topology.