| Abstract |
Power electronic converters and electrical drives are complex systems involving several problems regarding power electronics, electrical machines, digital control, signal processing, measuring electronics, electromagnetic compatibility etc. Thus, the hardware and software implementation require a lot of time to solve many details. Then a prototyping tool is necessary to limit the time to set-up experimental tests, letting the students and/or the researchers, to focus their attention mainly on the "concepts".
In the paper a rapid prototyping tool for power converter development is proposed; the tool, that can manage up to 100 kVA, is divided in two main sections: the control sections (hardware and software) to develop control strategies and the power section to test topologies and components. The control section is based on a commercial tool (dSPACE DS1103 PPC Controller board); oppositely, the power section is a dedicated design and realization.
The prototyping tool has been designed to satisfy four main requirements: modularity, flexibility, completeness and robustness: modularity and flexibility have been obtained by a Power Electronic Building Block (PEBB) architecture that allows to configure different converter topologies; completeness means that all the variables con be accessed and acquired; robustness means that the EMC problems typically affecting prototype realizations (especially in medium and high power realization) are avoided.
The effectiveness of the tool is demonstrated by experimental results, related to some application examples. |
