Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: The motor overvoltage phenomenon is an issue that may arise from the high voltage slew rates ($\mathrm{d}v/\mathrm{d}t$) of silicon carbidemosfets in cable-fed drives. This can lead to substantial strain on cable and motor insulation, resulting from partial discharges and uneven voltage distribution. In line with this, this article presents a novel method to select inductor and capacitor parameters for a zero-voltage switching (ZVS) inverter to mitigate motor overvoltage. The ZVS inverter employs only one additional active switch on the positive dc terminal compared with two-level inverters. This prevents the need for bulkyLCRandRCpassive filters or multilevel inverters in conventional solutions, which may lead to increased volume and losses. The presented approach suppresses overvoltage oscillations by profiling the$\mathrm{d}v/\mathrm{d}t$of both resonant and natural commutations while minimizing the switching losses. A comparison with alternative techniques for mitigating motor overvoltage was conducted to demonstrate the method's efficacy, including two-level passive filter strategies and three-level inverters. The presented technique was validated through simulations in PLECS and MATLAB/Simulink, demonstrating a 1% increase in efficiency and a 30% reduction in volume. Furthermore, the method was experimentally verified, showing the measured overvoltage being reduced from 2 to 1.06 per unit.
Institution: Cardiff University
Language: English
Subfield: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4386825131