A three phase fully regenerative converter for chopper controlled DC drives

A three-phase AC-DC converter allowing regeneration of the energy recovered by a four-quadrant chopper is presented and analyzed. The two-quadrant chopper is presented and analyzed. The two-quadrant three-phase bridge, using diodes in parallel with reverse connected transistors, replaces the diode bridge of the standard chopper configuration. This converter allows natural bidirectional current flow. Gating of the transistor coincides with the conduction of the corresponding diode. The DC bus inductor, capacitor, and braking resistor are eliminated. Experimental results confirm that the converter is fully regenerative and that transfer from motoring to regeneration is instantaneous. The overall performance of the system is comparable to that of the conventional four-quadrant chopper and far superior to that of the standard four-quadrant dual-bridge thyristor converter