Stray inductances in GTO thyristor circuits

Gate turn-off thyristors (GTOs) interrupt current at such tremendously high rates of fall, typically approaching 4000 A/μs in high power types, that the voltages induced by stray inductances as low as a fraction of a microhenry can be damaging. This necessitates the connection of a snubber network across each GTO, into which its anode current is diverted at turn-off. The authors present the results of a study into the relative importance of the various lumped circuit path stray inductances in generating these overshoot voltages. Mutual coupling effects are ignored for simplification