Current-clamped, modified series resonant DC-link power converter for a general purpose induction motor drive

A new AC/AC power converter topology, in which all the switches operate in a resonant fashion to reduce switching losses, is proposed. The topology enables conduction-period control of individual current pulses, whereby pulse-width modulation (PWM) could be achieved to a fair degree of accuracy with the associated controller. The scheme implements current peak (resonant) limiting by a simple diode clamp. Improved switch utilization (voltage × current) and reduced part-count could be cited as the merits of the circuit over the previous soft-switched current-sourced AC/AC configurations. It is experimentally verified that the output PWM controller could be used to implement constant V/F operation, and the results are presented. In-depth design criteria for the topology that gives optimized voltage stresses are presented. A charge-based, line current feed-forward, mode-controller is introduced at the input and digitally verified. Feasibility of the simultaneous control over both input power-factor and smooth input-output line currents are studied and the digital verification is presented