Design of a High-Voltage Piezoelectric Converter for Airbag Ignition Modules

Abstract

Due to the requirements for high reliability and accuracy, safety issues for airbag ignition systems need to be studied. In this paper, a high-voltage piezoelectric converter is designed to improve these requirements in airbag ignition systems. The proposed converter includes an inverter drive circuit, a Rosen piezoelectric transformer (PZT), an output circuit and a feedback control circuit. The key components of the high-voltage piezoelectric transformer are analyzed in detail. In addition, the proposed converter system is simulated and implemented for testing. The experimental results show that when the power supply is turned on, the charging time is less than 800ms. Furthermore, the output voltage of this converter can be kept between 2.9kV and 3.1kV, under high-efficiency constant current charging mode and zero-voltage switching conditions.

Piezoelectric Transformer-Based High-Voltage Pulse Generator Using Wide-Bandgap Semiconductors for Medical Electroporation Therapy

“…For instance, a PT-based high-voltage CCFL backlight inverter was very popular for LCD displays in 2000-2010 [ 9 ] . The use of PTs in high-voltage DC capacitor charging has been previously demonstrated with a relatively small capacitance (less than 1 µF) for applications such as Electro-Active Polymer (EAP) actuators [ 2 ] , automobile air-bag ignition systems [ 41 ] and pulsed-power systems [ 23 ].…”