Development of a Unipolar Converter for Variable Reluctance Motor Drives

A new converter concept for driving the switched reluctance motor has been developed. This converter has only one switching device per phase, uses a unipolar dc supply, returns all the trapped energy to the source, and does not require bifilar windings; it is called a C-dump converter because the trapped energy is dumped in a capacitor and then returned to the dc source. The topology for several different C-dump converters is presented. In addition, the design and experimental results for a C-dump converter using a chopper to recover the energy dumped on the capacitor are presented.