Commutation Performance of Current Source Converters fed Switched Reluctance Motors

The commutation operation of the current source converter for switched reluctance motor drives is analyzed in this paper. The commutation operation in the current source converter consists of two modes. At turn-off of phase switch, the phase current decreases sinusoidally, and the sum of two phase currents during commutation period is constant. At this time, the capacitor voltage increases quickly with changing polarity and decreases slowly when another phase switches turn on or off. Frequency of step-down DC chopper in the current source converter is low because of the dump such as BJTs and GTOs are possible as phase switches instead of Power MOSFET and IGBTS. They may result in reductions of conduction losses and manufacturing cost in the current source converter comparing to the voltage source converter of SRM.