title: Analysis of the thermal balance characteristics for multiple-connected piezoelectric transformers.
abstract: Because the amount of power that a piezoelectric transformer (PT) can handle is limited, multiple connections of PTs are necessary for the power-capacity improvement of PT-applications. In the connection, thermal imbalance between the PTs should be prevented to avoid the thermal runaway of each PT. The thermal balance of the multiple-connected PTs is dominantly affected by the electrothermal characteristics of individual PTs. In this paper, the thermal balance of both parallel-parallel and parallel-series connections are analyzed by electrical model parameters. For quantitative analysis, the thermal-balance effects are estimated by the simulation of the mechanical loss ratio between the PTs. The analysis results show that with PTs of similar characteristics, the parallel-series connection has better thermal balance characteristics due to the reduced mechanical loss of the higher temperature PT. For experimental verification of the analysis, a hardware-prototype test of a Cs-Lp type 40 W adapter system with radial-vibration mode PTs has been performed.
authors.affiliation: Seoul National University, Department of Electrical Engineering, Seoul, South Korea.
authors.forename: Joung-Hu
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: Bo-Hyung
authors.initials: BH
authors.lastname: Cho
authors.forename: Sung-Jin
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Choi
authors.forename: Sang-Min
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Lee