Designers Series XII

n this issue, and previous issues of SPM, we cover

the latest technologies in exotic high-density power.
Most power supplies in the commercial world,
however, are built with the bread-and-butter tech-
nologies we have used for decades. Square wave
PWM converters are still the most cost effective way to
provide regulated voltages in electronics systems, and
will remain so for many years to come.

©Copyright 2005 Switching Power Magazine 1

 Flyback Snubber Design

Many application notes and designs ignore the ringing

All PWM converters have nonideal parasitics waveforms and operate the converter without address-
that lead to ringing waveforms that must be ing the issue. There are two problems with this: firstly,
properly suppressed. Without this, semiconduc- there is excessive voltage on the drain of the FET
tors can be prone to failure, and noise levels will which can lead to avalanche breakdown and eventually
be higher than necessary. In this article, we will failure of the device. Secondly, the ringing energy will
be radiated and conducted throughout the power sup-
talk about practical design techniques for the
ply, load, and electronic system, creating noise issues
most commonly used snubber and clamp circuits
and even logic errors. The ringing frequency will also
for the flyback converter. show up as a peak of the EMI spectrum in both radiat-
ed and conducted EMI.
1.
In most designs, this is not acceptable, and it is neces-
sary to add circuit elements to damp the ringing (using
RC snubber), or clamp the voltage (with RCD clamps),
or both. The design of these networks is a combination
of measurements and analysis to ensure a rugged and
dependable result. In this article, we will review the two
different types of snubber design procedures.

Figure 1a: Flyback converter schematic Primary RC Snubber for

Flyback Converter with Flyback Converter
Figure 2a shows an RC snubber circuit, used to damp
No Snubbers the ringing on the drain of the FET. The resistor pro-
Figure 1a shows the basic flyback circuit with no vides damping for the LC resonance of the power cir-
snubbers in place. Ideally, the circuit has squarewave cuit, and the series capacitor prevents the voltages at
characteristics when turning on and off. In practice, the power stage switching frequency from being
however, the turn-off of the power switch interrupts applied across the resistor. The capacitor is sized to allow
current through the leakage inductance of the trans- the resistor to be effective at the ringing frequency. The RC
former, that this will snubber is best placed directly across the semiconduc-
cause a voltage spike on tor that is to be protected.
the drain of the FET.
If you are using a current sense resistor in series with
The inductance will then the FET, make sure that the snubber is connected to the
ring with stray capaci- top of the sense resistor, not to ground. When you do
tances in the circuit, pro- this, the sense resistor will not see the current spike at
ducing large amplitude turn-on when the snubber capacitor is discharged.
high-frequency wave-
forms as shown in Figure
1b. On the fly-
back primary, the
measured leakage
inductance rings
with primary
capacitances.

Figure 1b: Flyback converter drain voltage Figure 2a: Flyback converter with primary RC snubber.
with no snubber Ringing frequency = 12 MHz.

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 Flyback Snubber Design

The requirements of designing the RC snubber are sim-

ple– choose a resistor to properly damp the ringing,
select a capacitor, and make sure that the dissipation of
the network is not excessive. In the days of low-fre-
quency switching, it was not uncommon for engineers
to use resistor and capacitor decade boxes to empirical-
ly try different values to damp the ringing. We prefer a
more analytical approach than this to optimize the
design. Decade boxes don't work that well with ringing
frequencies well above 1 MHz, and this was never an Figure 3a: Flyback transformer impedance measurement with
effective method for finding the best compromise of secondary shorted
dissipation and damping.
That leaves us with the leakage inductance of the trans-
former, L, which is easy to measure with a frequency
response analyzer. To do so, a short circuit is applied
across the secondary (or secondaries) of the flyback
Figure 2b: Flyback convert- transformer, and the impedance is measured from the
er drain waveform with pri- primary winding. It is recommended to do this across a
mary RC snubber added wide range of frequencies, including the power supply
switching frequency, and the snubber ringing frequen-
cy, in order to capture the proper value of leakage
inductance.

Design Step 1:
Measure Leakage Inductance
The first step in the design of an effective RC snubber
is to measure one of the parasitic elements causing the
observed ringing. There are two choices of components
to measure- the total effective capacitance, or the leak-
age inductance. Capacitance is hard to define and meas-
ure. It is a combination of nonlinear semiconductor
junction capacitances, transformer winding capacitance,
and any other stray capacitances such as heatsinks. The Figure 3b: Flyback transformer primary leakage inductance
ringing frequency is often high enough that even an measurement
oscilloscope probe can impact the waveforms when
connected to the circuit. Due to proximity effects in the transformer, the leakage
inductance can vary significantly at higher frequencies,
as shown in Fig. 3b. Notice that the leakage actually
drops with frequency. For the design of the primary
NOTE: Whatever you do, do not RC snubber, we use the value of inductance obtained at
guess at the value of the leakage 12 MHz.
inductance. It is a common, (and
very flawed), rule of thumb to Design Step 2:
assume that the leakage inductance Measure the Snubber Ringing Frequency
is 1% of magnetizing inductance. It Fig. 1b shows the undamped ringing on the drain of
can be more than an order of magni- the FET. As mentioned before, care must be taken in
tude different from this, and snubber capturing this waveform. You can usually see it without
design based on the 1% number will even touching the drain of the FET with the scope
rarely be useful. probe, and this gives the most accurate measurement
unaffected by the probe capacitance.

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 Flyback Snubber Design

Notice that the ringing on the FET is asymmetrical, charging is done with the inductance, and as such, the
with sharp peaks, and wider bottoms of the waveforms. dissipation may be a little lower than predicted
This is due to the nonlinear nature of the output capaci- by this expression. However, it is a good conser-
tance of the FET, which reduces as the voltage is vative design estimate.
increased. From this waveform, estimate the ringing fre-
quency, fr. To proceed with a good snubber design, this Design Step 5:
frequency should preferably be two orders of magnitude
Experimental Verification of Design
higher than the switching frequency, or dissipation will
The final step in the design is to experimentally test the
become excessive. If this is not the case in your power
snubber. Do not skip this important step. Errors in
supply design, you must work on reducing the leakage
measurement, miscalculation, excessive lead lengths
inductance of the transformer, or the circuit capacitance,
and nonlinear circuit events during switch transition
or both.
can all affect how well the snubber will work.
Design Step 3: Figure 2b shows the ringing on the drain of the pri-
Calculate the Snubber Resistor and Capacitor mary FET with the snubber in place. Notice that the
In order to damp the ringing properly, we need to calcu- ringing is very quickly damped out, greatly reducing
late the characteristic impedance of the resonant circuit. EMI. The peak of the waveform is also substantially
This is given by: reduced. The snubbed waveform is shown with an
input of 50 V, whereas the unsnubbed waveform was at
30 V input.
The ringing will be well damped if we use a snubber
resistor equal to the characteristic impedance of the It is difficult to reduce this voltage spike much further
ringing. We therefore use the design point of R=Z to using just a simple RC snubber. For many applications,
select the resistor. the RC snubber is the best solution, but for some
offline solutions using integrated power controllers, it
The snubber capacitor is used to minimize dissipation at is necessary to clamp this voltage to a lower value to
the switching frequency, while allowing the resistor to prevent failure of the FET. This is discussed in the next
be effective at the ringing frequency. The best design section of this article.
point to start with is the impedance of the capacitor at
the ringing frequency equal to the resistor value. Primary RCD Clamp for
Flyback Converter
Figure 4a shows an RCD clamp circuit, used to limit
the peak voltage on the drain of the FET when an RC
snubber is insufficient to prevent switch overvoltage.
The RCD clamp works by absorbing the current in the
Design Step 4: leakage inductor once the drain voltage exceeds the
clamp capacitor voltage. The use of a relatively large
Calculate the Snubber Dissipation capacitor keeps the voltage constant over a switching cycle.
The dissipation is determined by the size of the snubber
capacitor. The approximate dissipation is given by:
The resistor of the RCD clamp always dissipates
power, even when there is no power in the main con-
verter. Even with very little load on the converter, the
where V is the voltage on the FET given by the input
capacitor will always be charged up to the voltage
voltage plus the reflected output voltage. Make sure to
reflected from the secondary of the converter, vf. As
use the switching frequency, fs, in this calculation, not
the load is increased, more energy will flow into the
the ringing frequency. capactor, and the voltage will rise by an additional
amount, vx, above the ideal square wave flyback volt-
Note: the usual factor of ½ does not appear in this
age. The voltages are defined in Figure 4a.
expression since the resistor will dissipate power both
when the capacitor is charged and discharged. The

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 Flyback Snubber Design

In other words, the higher we

let the clamp voltage rise on the
switch, the lower the overall
dissipation. But of course, we
Figure 4a: Flyback converter with primary RCD clamp must balance this against the total
voltage seen across the power FET, so we cannot arbitrarily
reduce dissipation.
Design Step 1:
Measure Leakage Inductance A typical design is for the voltage vx to be equal to ½
It is crucial to measure the leakage inductance of the the flyback voltage. In this case, the dissipation is equal
flyback transformer prior to designing the snubber. to 3 times the stored energy in the leakage inductance.
Details of how to do this are given earlier in this article This is a conservative estimate, however. It does not
for the RC snubber design. For the RCD clamp, we are account for lossy discharge of the inductor, nor for stray
concerned with how much energy is stored in the leak- capacitance. In reality, the design will have less loss in
age inductance, rather than the incremental leakage the clamp than anticipated due to these effects.
value at the ringing frequency. For a more conservative
design, it is better to use the value of leakage induc- For high-voltage offline designs which are often con-
tance measured at the switching frequency, rather than strained to use a FET with a maximum voltage of 600
the ringing frequency. or 650 V, the voltage vx will have a hard limit set by the
maximum input line, maximum current, and FET break-
We'll iterate again - don't guess at the leakage induc- down voltage. Do not exceed the stated Vds of the FET,
tance, or use the 1% rule for its value. Measure it to be and be aware that the breakdown degrades with temper-
sure of a good snubber design. ature. Some designers rely on the avalanche capability
of the FET to let them regularly exceed the breakdown
Design Step 2: voltage. We do not recommend this approach for a
Determine Peak Clamp Voltage rugged power supply.
Now you must decide how much voltage can be tolerat-
ed on the power MOSFET, and calculate the amount of Design Step 3:
power that will be dissipated in the clamp with this Select Clamp Resistor
clamp level. The energy stored in the leakage induc- The capacitor of the snubber needs to be large enough
tance, L, with a current Ip at turn-off is given by: to keep a constant voltage while absorbing the leakage
energy. Apart from this consideration, its value is not
critical, and will not affect the peak voltage when the
snubber is working properly.
Analysis of the RCD snubber has appeared in papers
and numerous application notes. It is assumed that there The resistor is the element that is crucial in determining
are no stray capacitances to charge, and that all the the peak voltage vx, and it should be selected with:
leakage energy is conducted into the snubber capacitor
from the leakage inductance. The capacitor is assumed
to be large enough that its value does not change signif-
icantly during one switching cycle.
A larger value of resistor will slow the discharge of the
With these assumptions, the power dissipated by
clamp capacitor, and allow the voltage to rise to a higher
the RCD clamp can be expressed in terms of the
value. A smaller value will result in a lower clamp volt-
energy stored in the inductor as follows:
age, but the dissipation will be increased.

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 Flyback Snubber Design

In most designs, the clamp resistor value obtained will be diode, resulting in ringing. The type of diode chosen for
very different from the resistor value for the RC snubber the RCD snubber is crucial. It must be as fast as possi-
described earlier. Don't expect to get similar values. ble with the proper voltage rating.

Design Step 4: The severity of this ringing will depend on the the
Calculate Power Loss reverse applied voltage across the RCD diode. The
higher you allow the clamp voltage to climb, the lower
The snubber design is now complete, but we need to
the dissipation, but the more voltage and dv/dt is
know what the dissipation will be for currents other
applied to the diode. A mere 20 ns turn-off delay is a
than the maximum current. Use the following equation
substantial portion of the ringing waveform period.
to calculate the voltage rise in a known snubber for a
Figure 4c shows how this ringing is increased as the
given peak current and leakage inductance.
allowed clamp voltage is raised. While the FET is still
well protected, the RCD snubber in this case has not
The value of the voltage rise, vx, above the flyback volt-
solved the EMI problem of the ringing waveform.
age is given by: Figure 4c:
Flyback converter
MOSFET voltage
with primary RCD
clamp and
decreased dissipa-
tion (ie increased
and the power dissipation is given by: value for vx)

The ringing can subsequently be damped out again by

reintroducing the RC snubber, designed as described
above. Figure 4d shows the drain waveform with both
an RCD clamp and RC snubber in place. This provides
Design Step 5: the best protection for the FET, and the lowest EMI sig-
Experimental Verification nature, but results in the highest power dissipation.
As with the design of the RC snubber, experimental
verification of the design is essential. Figure 4b shows
the effectiveness of the circuit in clamping the peak Figure 4d: Flyback
converter MOSFET
value of the FET drain voltage. voltage with primary
RCD clamp and RC
snubber
Figure 4b: Flyback
converter MOSFET
voltage with primary
RCD clamp

Secondary RC Snubber for

Flyback Converter
This figure also shows a limitation of the RCD clamp. Many designers spend time in designing effective snub-
After the clamping period is finished, the circuit ber for the primary of their circuit in order to protect the
resumes ringing. With ideal components, this would not main power switch. Once the design is complete, the
happen. However, the diode of the RCD clamp has a waveforms look clean on the primary side, and another
finite reverse recovery time which allows the leakage source of noise and stress is often overlooked.
inductor current to flow in the opposite direction in the

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 Flyback Snubber Design

If a probe is placed on the secondary side of the power

transformer, another ringing waveform is observed due
to the turn-off of the output power diode. Figure 5b
shows this waveform with two different time scales.
The excess voltage applied across the output rectifier is Figure 5b:
severe, and is often even more destructive than the pri- Secondary diode
mary waveforms. Schottky rectifiers, especially, are waveform without
snubber. Ringing
very unforgiving of excessive voltage, and these ringing
frequency = 24
waveforms must be suppressed in a similar way to the MHz
primary waveforms.

Figure 5a: RC
snubber added
to the flyback
secondary

Figure 5c: Secondary diode

waveform with snubber

The secondary snubber is best placed directly across the

diode. The design procedure for the secondary snubber You can also see that the secondary ringing frequency is
is almost identical to the primary snubber. Make sure much higher that the primary ringing frequency, 24
that you use the right value of leakage, calculated from MHz versus 12 MHz. This is good since it makes the
the measured primary inductance divided by the turns secondary waveform much easier to snub with minimal
ratio squared. dissipation. The higher the ringing frequency relative to
the switching frequency, the better.
Notice that the waveform is more noticeably asymmet-
rical than the primary waveforms. The secondary capac- Figure 5c shows the result of the RC snubber
itance is dominated by the diode capacitance, and the applied to the secondary. The waveform is very
transformer only makes a small contribution. Hence the effectively damped with less than 100 mW of dis-
nonlinearity of the semiconductor capacitance is more sipation (for a 24 W output).
clearly seen.
Don't forget the auxiliary outputs of your converter, too.
Each secondary diode will need an RC snubber applied
to properly protect the device.

©Copyright 2005 Switching Power Magazine 7