Analysis and design of a novel soft-switching three-phase inverter

A novel low cost four main switches and four auxiliary switches power converter configuration of the soft-switching three-phase inverter is proposed in this paper. All main switches in the three-phase inverter operate at zero-voltage-switching (ZVS) turn on. The auxiliary switches operate at zero-current-switching (ZCS) turn on and turn off. Since the control circuits and the auxiliary circuits are thereby reduced to two sets, the reduction in the number of main switches can also increase the reliability. Thus, the proposed power converter configuration achieves low cost and high efficiency without changing device rate. The principle of operation, experimental results of the soft-switching three-phase inverter, rated 600W and operated at 40kHz, are also provided to demonstrate the performance.