Inductor Design for an Automotive Propulsion Drive Power Hardware in the Loop Test Rig

A motor emulator composed of a coupling inductor and a power converter provides a simplified and flexible drive inverter test rig that can be run with lower cost and faster implementation without a need for any moving element. The inductor coupling of the inverter under test and the motor emulator inverter plays a vital role in the construction of the currents in equivalence to the operation, loading condition of the emulated motor, and the smoothing of the current waveforms. Proper design of the inductor size can minimise the current ripples resulting from the power electronics switching devices to the limits of an actual motor application. This paper proposes a design method for sizing the coupling inductance between the two inverters. A comparison of the ripple current estimated by the design method, simulation results, and experimental results are used to validate the proposed sizing method.