A 36-Pulse AC–DC Converter With DC-Side Tapped Interphase Bridge Rectifier for Power Quality Improvement

This article presents a circuit configuration to reduce the harmonic contents at the ac mains of a 12-pulse zigzag configured autotransformer-based diode bridge rectifier (DBR). The proposed circuit configuration employs a tapped interphase bridge rectifier at the dc side of 12-pulse DBR that results in higher pulses in the supply current, thus reducing the harmonic content and, thereby, improving the power quality of the system. Since the autotransformer employed is zigzag configured, the need for zero-sequence blocking transformer is eliminated. Moreover, the proposed circuit configuration at the dc side shapes the supply current near to a sine wave. Further, the proposed configuration is analyzed, simulated in MATLAB/Simulink, and the simulation results are presented, which confirms the improvement in power quality parameters in the input ac line current. Furthermore, the viability of the proposed configuration is verified by the experimental results that confirm the suitability of the proposed configuration in ac–dc applications.