A three-phase reduced switch high power factor buck-type converter

The paper proposes a three-phase, reduced switch, buck-type converter that can operate with input power factor correction. The key feature of the proposed converter is that a switch in the converter has a lower peak voltage stress than a switch in a conventional three-phase, single-switch buck converter. The voltage stress in the proposed converter is limited to the peak value of the phase voltage of the input capacitors rather than the peak value of the line-to-line voltage, as is the case in the conventional converter. The reduction in the voltage stresses is therefore almost half as compared to that of conventional converter. This allows lower rated, standard devices to be used in the converters and reduces switching losses. In the paper, the steady state operation of the converter is presented and general properties and design considerations are discussed. The feasibility of the proposed converter is confirmed with results obtained from an experimental prototype.