Recently induction cookers, which are based on induction heating principle, have become quite popular due to their advantages such as high energy efficiency, safety, cleanliness, and compact size. However, it is widely known that with current technology, induction cookers require the cookware to be made of magnetic materials such as iron and stainless steel. This is why a lot of cookware is labeled "Induction Ready" on the bottom. The limited choice of "Induction Ready" cookware causes inconvenience to customers and limits the growing popularity of the induction cooker. Therefore, a novel induction cooker, which can work for non-magnetic material cookware such as aluminum and copper, can be very competitive in the market.
This thesis studies the induction cooking application; briefly introduces its fundamental principle, research background and the motivation of the development of a non-magnetic material induction cooker. Followed by the research motivation, three commonly used inverter topologies, series resonant inverter, parallel resonant inverter, and single-ended resonant inverter, are introduced. A comparative study is made among these three topologies, and the comparative study leads to a conclusion that the series resonant inverter is more suitable for non-magnetic material induction cooking application.
The thesis also presents several major issues about non-magnetic material induction cooking and how to deal with these issues through induction coil design, higher operating frequency and novel control strategy. Because of non-magnetic material's low resistivity and permeability characteristics, it is difficult to be heated and to achieve soft-switching while the coupling between the induction coil and the cooking pan can be easily changed. Later in this thesis, these issues will be discussed in detail and some potential solutions to these issues such as self-sustained oscillating control, optimized induction coil design, proper selection of power semiconductor device, etc.
A 1.5 kW high frequency series resonant inverter with self-sustained oscillating control is prototyped. Experimental results demonstrated successful operation of the resonant inverter under up to 1.5 kW, and the inverter's capability to maintain zero-voltage turn-on during wide operating condition is confirmed.
At the end, a summary is given about the research work done in the thesis and future research work is discussed. / Master of Science
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/40674 |
| Date | 04 February 2011 |
| Creators | Liu, Zidong |
| Contributors | Electrical and Computer Engineering, Lai, Jih-Sheng, Meehan, Kathleen, Yu, Wensong |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | Liu_Zidong_T_2011.pdf |
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