A low‐loss snubber for reducing motor terminal surge voltage

Abstract

AbstractThe development of an advanced Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) has enabled high‐frequency switching operation and has improved the performance of PWM inverters for motor drive. However, the IGBT's high rate of dv/dt has adverse effects on motor insulation stress. In many motor drive applications, the inverter and motor are separated, requiring long motor feeds. The long cable contributes high‐frequency ringing at the motor terminal and results in high surge voltage which stresses the motor insulation. The inverter output filter and RDC snubber are the conventional method for reducing the surge voltage.In this paper, we propose a new low‐loss snubber to reduce the motor terminal surge voltage. The snubber consists of the series connection of chraging/discharging capacitor and the voltage‐clamped capacitor. At IGBT turn‐off, the snubber starts to operate when the IGBT voltage reaches the voltage‐clamped level. Since dv/dt is decreased by snubber operating, the peak level of the surge voltage can be reduced. Also the snubber operates at the IGBT voltage above the voltage‐clamped level, and the snubber loss is largely reduced compared with the RDC snubber. The proposed snubber enables reduction of the motor terminal surge voltage with low loss. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 150(4): 64–72, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/eej.10378