Analysis and Hardware Implementation of Induction-Heating Cooktops for Maximizing Usability and User Convenience

Research and studies on design methodologies and control technologies aimed at enhancing heating performance of domestic induction cooktops have reached a certain level of maturity. However, in recent years, several issues have arisen concerning usability and consumer convenience. First, the obstacle of surface height persists even with a built-in case structure owing to the overall height of the induction cooktops. Second, acoustic noise is inevitably emitted due to the induction heating method. Therefore, in this paper, effective schemes for reducing height and noise emission are proposed respectively. Through utilizing full-bridge series resonant inverter, the overall height can be decreased to 30 mm since the volume of heat sink is minimized. Moreover, by adopting PFC converter at the rectifier stage, the average noise level of IH cooktop can be effectively suppressed compared to conventional IH systems, as the sideband harmonic component of output current can be nearly eliminated. The feasibility of the proposed methods is experimentally validated based on the experimental results using 3.2 kW test bed.