Qu Keqing

Selection of carrier waveforms for PWM inverter

In this paper the influence of different carrier waveforms upon the output characteristics of PWM inverter is described in detail. When a triangular carrier waveform is used in hard-switching PWM inverters, harmonics exist in the neighborhood of the output frequency of the inverter output voltage and current due to the dead time. The triangular carrier waveform used in soft-switching PWM inverter will cause difficulties in controlling resonance-trigger time, higher loss in the resonant circuit, and less utilization of the DC bus voltage. If a sawtooth carrier is used in hard-switching PWM inverter, there will be severe distortion in the current waveform. When sawtooth carriers with alternate positive and negative slopes are used in soft-switching PWM inverters, the resonance-trigger time is easy to control, and distortion in the output voltage and current caused by the dead time will not appear.

Locus of flux linkage for three-phase ZVS inverter

ZVS(zero voltage switching) PWM(pulse width modulation) inverters have attracted much attention recently. The basic idea is to use ZVS circuit as the main circuit of inverter resonance at the beginning of every carrier period so that each power device can com-mutate when voltage of the main circuit’s DC bus line is zero. To ensure the resonant circuit to operate properly, sawtooth with alternate slope (positive or negative) is used as carrier. But the time of zero voltage vectors with such PWM pattern is greatly different from traditional hard-switching PWM pattern. This paper discusses the locus of flux linkage under soft-switching PWM pattern by using space voltage vector. It is pointed out that, under the hard-switching PWM pattern, speed of flux linkage is adjusted by zero space voltage vector. When soft-switching PWM pattern is used, however, effective time of space voltage vector varies considerably, sometimes even without zero space voltage vector. Therefore non-zero space voltage vector has been used to make the speed of flux linkage locus equal to that of hard-switching PWM pattern. The cause of current distortion in soft-switching PWM inverters is also discussed. Based on the flux linkage locus circle, corresponding compensation methods are proposed. Experimental results show that the described method can effectively improve output current waveform of inverter.

Current polarity detection and current compensation strategy for PAC based three-phase ZVS PWM converter

A novel software implementation for current polarity detection and current compensation is presented. For a three-phase zero-voltage soft-switching (ZVS) PWM converter based on phase and amplitude control (PAC), when saw-tooth carriers with alternate positive and negative slopes are adopted, the positive or negative slopes are chosen according to the phase current polarity. Since polarity reversal causes current distortion, current at the instant of reversal should be compensated for. Based on the characteristic of unity power factor converter in rectification and regeneration modes, a software implementation for current polarity detection is proposed. Distortion of current zero-crossing caused by using saw-tooth carriers with alternate positive and negative slopes is analyzed, and the relevant compensation method is proposed. Experimental study with a 1.5 kW device shows that phase current has a small harmonic content and power factor is high both in rectification and regeneration modes.