Linear modeling of the three-phase diode front-ends with reduced capacitance considering the continuous conduction mode

Reducing the DC-link capacitance considerably is a new trend in many applications, such as: motor drives, electrolysers etc.. A straight forward method for modelling the diode front-end is to build a non-linear diode based model. This non-linear model gives difficulties when the controllers for the entire drive systems have to be designed. A linearization and simplification to single phase model can be performed; however, when inductance is present at the grid side its performance is not satisfactory. The problem is mainly caused by neglecting the continuous conduction mode of the rectifier in the simplified model. This article proposes a simplified linear model where the continuous conduction mode is also considered. The DC-link voltage and current waveforms obtained through the proposed simplified model matches very well the waveforms obtained with the three phase diode based model and also the experiments.