A Four-Quadrant Three-Phase AC-DC Converter for Virtual Electric Traction Machine

Virtual electric traction machine (VETM) is a power electronic converter based system capable of emulating behavior of an electric motor. The widely used VETM systems in industrial drives testing environment, makes use of traditional two-stage AC-DC-AC converter. However, this multistage conversion requires DC link energy storage device as well as individual control algorithm. Hence, to simplify control and reduce number of converter stages, this paper proposes a three-phase AC-DC converter topology suitable for four-quadrant operation of VETM system. Unlike twelve switches in traditional AC-DC-AC converter, the proposed topology uses ten power semiconductor switches reducing switching losses. In this paper, a detailed operation of proposed converter is presented in along with simulation and experimental results for a 2 kW PMSM motor emulator.