The purpose of the present study is to determine the thermal feasibility of an air-cooled power inverter. The inverter circuitry layout is designed in tandem with the thermal management of the devices. The cylindrical configuration of the air-cooled inverter concept accommodates a collinear axial air blower and a cylindrical capacitor with inverter cards oriented radially between them. Cooling air flows from the axial fan around the inverter cards and through the center hole of the cylindrical capacitor. The present study is a continuation of the thermal feasibility study conducted in fiscal year 2009 for the Oak Ridge National Laboratory to design a power inverter with a radial inflow cylindrical configuration. Results in the present study are obtained by modeling the inverter concept in computer simulations using the finite element method. Air flow rate, ambient air temperature, voltage, and device switching frequency are studied parametrically. Inlet air temperature was 50°C for all the results reported. Transient and steady-state simulations are based on inverter current that represents the US06 supplemental federal test procedure from the US EPA. The source of heat to the system comes from the power dissipated in the form of heat from the switches and diodes and is modeled as a function of the voltage, switching frequency, current, and device temperature. Since the device temperature is a result as well as an input variable, the steady-state and transient solution are iterative on this parameter. The results demonstrate the thermal feasibility of using air to cool an axial-flow power inverter. This axial inflow configuration decreases the pressure drop through the system by 63% over the radial inflow configuration, and the ideal blower power input for an inlet air flow rate of 540 cfm is reduced from 936 W to 312 W for the whole inverter. When the model is subject to one or multiple current cycles, the maximum device temperature does not exceed 164°F (327°F) for an inlet flow rate of 270 cfm, ambient temperature of 120°C, voltage of 650 V, and switching frequency of 20 kHz. Although the maximum temperature in one cycle is most sensitive to ambient temperature, the ambient temperature affect decays after approximately half the duration of one cycle. Of the parametric variables considered in the transient simulations, the system is most sensitive to inlet air flow rate.

It is customary to obtain ac power from batteries through a power converter, where mains ac power is not readily available. Such a power converter is also needed in several mobile/ airborne/ space applications. Till recently this application is served by a H bridge inverter followed by a low frequency transformer and a passive low pass filter. The H bridge inverter employs high frequency pulse width modulation. The transformer is made of standard silicon steel. The filter is made of L and C elements. In such a converter the magnetics account for about 30% of cost and 50% of weight. Moreover the dc input current in such converters is discontinuous, leading to poor efficiency. There is need for an input filter as well. This thesis presents the development of an inverter with high frequency (hf) link. The power converter employs a boost front end resulting in continuous input current. The H bridge inverter employs phase modulation technique with soft switching features. The boost converter and the H bridge share power devices. The isolation transformer handles high frequency ac power and is compact. It is shown that the transformer size can be reduced by more than one order of magnitude. There is a rear end cycloconverter to reconvert the high frequency ac power into 50 Hz output power. Innovative pulse sequencing in the cycloconverter ensures loss-less switching. The pulse width modulation shifts the dominant harmonic frequency to double the switching frequency. The output LC filter is light. The converter can handle bidirectional power. The controller is digital. The overall concept was demonstrated through the 500 W prototype design. The proposed topology offers small size, low losses and continous input current. The controller is digital and offers totally software based compensation and settings. It is expected that on account of the small size and cost, this topology is likely to become more popular in the near future. The applications of such power converters will bring down the size and cost of UPS, solar inverters, wind mill inverters etc.

This thesis proposes a high efficiency driving circuit for multiple light emitting diode (LED) lamps with dimming feature. The driving circuit consists of essentially a high-frequency half-bridge series resonant inverter with multiple output transformers, on which primary windings are connected in series, while secondary sides are loaded by LED lamps rated at different powers with different turn ratios. By controlling the frequency of the inverter, the resonant current as well as the lamp current can be regulated simultaneously. On the other hand, the LED lamps can be dimmed individually by the associated dimming switches with integral cycle control. The tactful circuit ensures a high circuit efficiency owing to less conducting losses and zero-voltage switching (ZVS) operation of the active power switches of the inverter and zero current switching (ZCS) operation of the dimming switches. Two prototype circuits designed for 60 W three RGB LED lamps and 50 W five white light LED lamps have been built and tested to verify the analytical predictions. Experimental results demonstrate that the driving circuit can operate the LED lamps at a high efficiency with a wide dimming range. The lamp power can be dimmed to 10% with frequency control, while whole dimming range can be achieved with integral cycle control. The circuit efficiency with integral cycle control is relatively higher than that with frequency control. The measured efficiencies for the two designed circuit are 93% and 90%, respectively, under the rated powers.

A high-frequency half-bridge series resonant inverter with multiple output transformers is developed for driving multiple cold-cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs) with dimming feature. The primary sides of the transformers are connected in series with the resonant inverter to have an identical current, while the secondary sides are loaded by CCFLs with galvanic isolation to each other. To ensure a high circuit efficiency, the active power switches of the inverter are designed to be switched on at zero voltage. The resonant current of the inverter can be regulated by controlling the switching frequency of the inverter, so that all CCFLs can be dimmed simultaneously. On the other hand, the primary sides of the output transformers are associated with parallel switches to dim the CCFLs individually. These dimming switches are operated at a low frequency by integral cycle control with zero current switching (ZCS) to reduce the switching losses. The resonant circuit is tactfully designed to alleviate the variation of the resonant current caused by the switching of dimming switches. A laboratory circuit is built for driving 5 CCFLs. The intended circuit performances are confirmed by test results. The variation of the resonant current is less than 10% when the dimming switches are switching, and the measured efficiency for the circuit is 96.15% under the rated powers.

Advanced pulse width modulation (PWM) techniques such as space vector PWM, active zero state PWM, discontinuous PWM, and near state PWM methods are used in three-phase AC motor drives for the purpose of obtaining low PWM current ripple, wide voltage linearity range, and reduced common mode voltage (CMV). In some applications, a filter is inserted between the inverter and the motor for the purpose of reducing the stresses in the motor. The motor current PWM ripple components, terminal voltage overshoots, shaft voltage, and bearing currents, etc. can all be reduced by means of PWM techniques and passive filters. Various PWM techniques and passive filter types exist. This thesis studies the combinations of PWM techniques and filters and evaluates the performance of the motor drive in terms of the discussed stresses in the motor. PWM techniques are reviewed, a generalized algorithm for the implementation of PWM techniques is developed, and implementation on a 4 kW rated drive is demonstrated. Filter types are studied, among them the common mode inductor and the pure sine filter (PSF) configurations are investigated in detail. Filters are designed and their laboratory performance is evaluated. In the final stage the advanced PWM techniques and filters are combined, the incompatibility problem of discontinuous PWM methods with the PSF is illustrated. A cure based on rate of change limiter is proposed and its feasibility proven in the laboratory experiments. With the use of the proposed PWM algorithm and PSF, a motor drive with ideal DC to AC conversion stage (DC to pure sine) is achieved and its performance is demonstrated in the laboratory.

In this thesis various reduced common mode voltage (RCMV) pulse width modulation (PWM) techniques and active/passive common mode voltage (CMV) reduction methods for voltage source inverter driven three-phase AC motors are theoretically and practically investigated. A novel RCMV-PWM method, the near state PWM (NSPWM) method is proposed for operation at high modulation index. At low modulation index, a modified version of an existing RCMV-PWM method, AZSPWM1, termed as MAZSPWM, is proposed to mitigate the voltage reflection problem of the method. An optimum modulation algorithm combining NSPWM and MAZSPWM with seamless transition is proposed. The proposed RCMV-PWM methods significantly reduce CMV but they suppress common mode current (CMC) partially. Utilization of a common mode inductor together with RCMV-PWM methods is effective in suppressing the CMC. In the study, in addition to the CMV characteristics, various practical performance characteristics such as voltage linearity, inverter output current ripple, inverter DC-link current ripple, and output line-to-line voltage pulse pattern are also analyzed. The study involves analysis, computer simulations, and detailed laboratory experiments.

Within scope of this work, double-fourier analysis method of rapid calculation and detailed simulation method, which are used to investigate DC bus current harmonics in two level and three level three-phase inverters systematically, will be emphasized and two methods will be compared via applying different modulation techniques. In addition, DC bus currents will be investigated visually for various working conditions and modulation methods. After that, analysis methods will be applied and harmonic spectrums will be determined. After all, it will be showed that calculated harmonic spectrums could be treated as unified harmonics around certain frequencies and these unified harmonics could be reached easily via looking at predetermined table. Moreover, it will also be showed that unified harmonic values could be used to determine harmonic current components that are necessary for sizing DC bus capacitor and could be used in various inverter analysis.

In this thesis, high performance torque and speed control for a surface-mounted permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM) is designed, simulated and implemented. A three-phase two-level pulse width modulation voltage-source inverter (PWM-VSI) with power MOSFETs is used to feed the PMSM. The study has three objectives. The first is to compensate the voltage disturbance caused by nonideal characteristics of the voltage-source inverter (VSI). The second is to decouple the coupled variables in the synchronous reference frame model of the PMSM. The last is to design a load torque estimator in order to increase the disturbance rejection capability of the speed control. The angular acceleration required for load torque estimation is extracted through a Kalman filter from noisy velocity measurements. Proposed methods for improved torque and speed control performance are verified through simulations and experimental tests. The drive system is modeled in Matlab/Simulink, and control algorithms are developed based on this model. The experimental drive system comprises a three-phase VSI and a 385 W surface-mounted PMSM. Control algorithms developed in the study have been implemented in a digital signal processor (DSP) board and tested comprehensively. With the use of the proposed methods, a considerable improvement of torque and speed control performance has been achieved.

In this thesis, field oriented control of permanent magnet synchronous motors using three-level neutral-point-clamped inverter is studied. Permanent magnet synchronous motors are used in high performance drive applications. In this study, the permanent magnet synchronous motor is fed by three-level neutral-point-clamped inverter. For three-level neutral-point-clamped inverter different space vector modulation algorithms, which are reported in literature, are analyzed and compared via computer simulations. The voltage balance on dc-link capacitors is also analyzed and a software control method is implemented in conjunction with the space vector PWM modulation, utilized. Nonlinear effects such as dead-time, semiconductor voltage drop and delays in gate drive circuitries also present in neutral-point-clamped inverter. The effects of these nonlinearities are studied and a compensation method for these nonlinear effects is proposed. The theoretical results are supported with computer simulations and verified with experimental results.

An approach with ¡§consecutive orthogonal arrays (COA)¡¨ is proposed for solving the problems in designing power electronic circuits. This approach is conceptually based on the orthogonal array method, which has been successfully implemented in quality engineering. The circuit parameters to be determined are assigned as the controlled variables of the orthogonal arrays. Incorporating with the inferential rules, the average effects of each control variable levels are used as the indices to determine the control variable levels of the subsequent orthogonal array. By manipulating on COA, circuit parameters with the desired circuit performances can be found from an effectively reduced number of numerical calculations or experimental tests. In this dissertation, the method with COA is implemented on solving four problems often encountered in the design of power electronic circuits. The first problem one has to deal with is to find a combination with the best performance from a great number of analyzed results. The illustrative example is the design of LC passive filters. Using COA method, the desired component values of the filter can be effectively and efficiently found with far fewer calculations. The second design problem arises from the non-linearity of circuit. An experienced engineer may be able to figure out circuit parameters with satisfactory performance based on their pre-knowledge on the circuit. Nevertheless, they are always questioned whether a better choice can be made. The typical case is the self-excited resonant electronic ballast with the non-linear characteristics of the saturated transformer and the power transistor storage-time. In this case, the average effects of COA obtained from experimental tests are used as the observational indexes to search a combination of circuit parameters for the desired lamp power. The third problem is that circuit functions are mutually exclusive. The designers are greatly perplexed to decide the circuit parameters, with which all functions should be met at the same time. The method with COA is applied to design a filter circuit to achieve the goals of low EMI noise and high power factor simultaneously. Finally, one has to cope with the effects of the uncontrolled variables, such as: ambient temperature, divergence among different manufacturers, and used hours. By applying COA with inferential rules, electronic ballasts can be robustly designed to operate fluorescent lamps at satisfied performance under the influence of these uncontrolled variables.