Design, Simulation and Experimental Evaluation of a Bidirectional Buck-Boost Converter for Low-Voltage Electric Vehicle Energy Management

Author

Prof. V.R. Jambhulkar, Amruta Patil, Bhupen Maske, Yash Nighot, Sahil Gajbhiye, Harsh Akolkar

Abstract

 This paper presents a non-isolated bidirectional DC–DC converter that links a 36 V battery to the DC bus of a commercial inverter feeding a 36 V, 350 W brushless DC (BLDC) motor. The power stage is a synchronous half-bridge of two IRF3205 MOSFETs with a 120 µH inductor and a 1000 µF bus capacitor, switched by an IR2110 driver from complementary 20 kHz signals produced by an ESP32. Since both devices are gated actively, the inductor current can change sign with no change to the hardware or gating, so one stage acts as a buck converter when motoring and as a boost converter during regeneration. In MATLAB/Simulink, flipping the load torque from +5.6 N·m to −5.6 N·m at 1 s turned the battery current from about +4.9 A into −4.9 A, and the battery state of charge, previously falling, started to rise. Currents settled in roughly 0.1 s and simulated efficiency was about 0.9 in both directions. [Add one sentence with the key measured hardware result.] The work shows that regenerative energy transfer can be demonstrated with low-cost parts and a general-purpose microcontroller.

Keywords

bidirectional DC–DC converter, synchronous buck-boost, regenerative braking, electric vehicle, BLDC motor, ESP32, Simulink.

Full Text:

Download Paper PDF

References

 [1] M. A. Khan et al., “Performance analysis of bidirectional DC–DC converters for electric vehicles,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., 2015.

[2] L. Anbazhagan, J. Ramiah, V. Krishnaswamy, and D. N. Jayachandra, “A comprehensive review on bidirectional traction converter for electric vehicles,” Int. J. Electron. Telecommun., vol. 65, no. 4, pp. 635–649, 2019, doi: 10.24425/ijet.2019.129823.

[3] A. H. Almarzoogee and A. H. Mohammed, “Design a bidirectional DC/DC converter for second-level electric vehicle bidirectional charger,” in Proc. 4th ISMSIT, Istanbul, Turkey, Oct. 2020, doi: 10.1109/ISMSIT50672.2020.9254306.

[4] Y. Tong, I. Salhi, Q. Wang, G. Lu, and S. Wu, “Bidirectional DC–DC converter topologies for hybrid energy storage systems in electric vehicles: A comprehensive review,” Energies, vol. 18, no. 9, Art. 2312, 2025.

[5] J. K. Gaikwad, R. P. Bhandare, and P. A. Chougule, “MATLAB simulation of regenerative braking system in EV,” IARJSET, vol. 12, no. 3, pp. 230–233, Mar. 2025, doi: 10.17148/IARJSET.2025.12330.

[6] R. W. Erickson and D. Maksimovic, Fundamentals of Power Electronics, 2nd ed. New York, NY, USA: Springer, 2001.

[7] N. Mohan, T. M. Undeland, and W. P. Robbins, Power Electronics: Converters, Applications, and Design, 3rd ed. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley, 2003.

[8] International Rectifier, “IRF3205 HEXFET power MOSFET,” datasheet.

[9] International Rectifier, “IR2110(S)/IR2113(S) high and low side driver,” datasheet.

[10] Allegro MicroSystems, “ACS712: Fully integrated, Hall effect-based linear current sensor IC,” datasheet.

[11] Espressif Systems, “ESP32 technical reference manual (Motor Control PWM chapter).”

[12] Texas Instruments, “LM358: Dual operational amplifier,” datasheet.

Share your valuable work from Social Media Buttons