Design-oriented bifurcation analysis of power electronics systems

Bifurcation analysis has been applied to many power electronics circuits. Literature abounds with results regarding the various ways in which such circuits lose stability under variation of some selected parameters, e.g. via period-doubling bifurcation, Hopf bifurcation, border collision, etc. The current status of research in the identification of bifurcation behavior in power electronics has reached a stage where the salient types of bifurcation behavior, their underlying causes and the theoretical parameters affecting them have been well understood. Currently, the emphasis of research in this field has gradually shifted toward applications that are of direct relevance to practical design of power electronics. One direction is to apply some of the available research results in bifurcation behavior to the design of practical power electronics circuits. The main difficulty is that the abstract mathematical presentations of the available results are not directly applicable to practical design problems. In this paper we will discuss how research efforts may be directed to bridge this gap.