Preventing multiple switchings in power electronic circuits: effects of the latch on the nonlinear dynamics of the DC/DC buck converter

This paper investigates the effects of the insertion of a flip–flop type “latch” on the dynamics exhibited by a class of power electronic circuits. It is shown that, despite preventing multiple- switching phenomena, this device does not cause the expected suppression of chaotic behavior but actually introduces novel destabilizing effects which make the occurrence of chaos in this system to take place on a larger scale. A detailed comparison between the dynamics of the nonlatched voltage controlled converter and the latched one is presented. Also, the impli- cations on the existence of so-called sliding orbits and the associated bifurcation diagrams are discussed.