A Three-Phase Inverter Based Overmodulation Strategy of Asymmetrical Six-Phase Induction Machine

Abstract

Overmodulation (OVM) techniques of asymmetrical six-phase induction machine (ASIM) achieve higher dc-bus utilization by applying nonzero average voltage in nonenergy transfer plane. This results into unwanted current and associated copper loss. Existing OVM techniques reduce this loss with pulsewidth modulation (PWM) techniques from six-dimensional space vector perspective, which is both conceptually difficult and computationally challenging. The computational complexity of space vector based techniques is reduced by few existing PWM techniques in linear region by splitting the six-phase inverter as two three-phase inverters and modulate these inverters with linear PWM techniques in 30° phase shifted. This is referred as three-phase inverter based technique in the title. But, three-phase inverter based OVM technique does not exist in the literature due to lack of knowledge of the relationship between six-dimensional space vectors and space vectors of two three-phase inverters. This article first establishes this relation. Based on this relation, an OVM technique is proposed where the reference voltage vectors of two inverters are phase shifted by 30° but of different magnitudes. The proposed technique achieves THD and WTHD performances similar to space vector based best technique of ASIM with reduced computational complexity, as shown in details. The proposed strategy is validated through experiments and simulations on six-phase induction machine at 4.2 kW.