A versatile low power test bench for induction heating

In this paper, a focus is made on a design of a test bench resonant inverters for induction heating for industrial applications like metal heat treating. The design is based on half and full bridge single phase inverter of 1 and 4 kW rating. First, the power circuits of the two topologies are analyzed using computer aided design based on Simplorer package. Then, a small scale experimental system was built and tested using microcontroller chip. The performances of the topologies are highlighted and assessed. The obtained results show that two systems are able to operate satisfactory under soft switching at high frequency with high efficiency. The power control is more interesting for full bridge particularly when the angle phase control is considered. Further, the experimental results agree well with those obtained with the CAD design in the low power range. This validates the design model used for the purpose. Then, the model is exploited further for to develop a high power application.