The International Journal Of Engineering And Science (IJES) ||Volume||2 ||Issue|| 8 ||Pages|| 23-27||2013|| ISSN(e): 2319 1813 ISSN(p):

: 2319 1805

Feedback Controller for a 3-Phase 6-Pulse Rectifier

Sudeep Pyakuryal and Mohammad Matin
Daniel Felix Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science, University of Denver -------------------------------------------------------ABSTRACT---------------------------------------------------------------In all phase controlled thyristor bridges, the dc output voltage is a function of supply line to line voltage and the phase angle of gate firing signal. In an ac to dc converter, it is desired to obtain a constant dc output voltage, in spite of disturbances. Some of the disturbances are due to change in supply voltage, supply frequency, or load current, and due to harmonics produced by converter itself. The values of circuit parameters are also within a certain tolerance. So in high-volume production of rectifiers, the rectifier output voltage lies in some distribution. It is desired to have the output voltage within a range. However, this is not practical to achieve the dc output voltage within the range without the use of a negative feedback controller. Thus, we cannot just set a fixed firing angle for thyristors and obtain a desired dc output voltage under all conditions. The idea behind the use of negative feedback controller is to design a circuit that automatically adjusts the firing angle to obtain desired dc output voltage regardless of the disturbances. In this paper a 3-phase 6-pulse rectifier is designed first with the independently running pulse generators and then a negative feedback integral control is applied to the rectifier. Alternative Transients Program, ATP, has been used to model the rectifier and negative feedback system, and to obtain thyristor firing signals, input voltage and current waveforms, and output voltage waveform.

KEYWORDS: Integral Control, Negative Feedback, Phase Control, Rectifier, Thyristor. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Date of Submission: 1August2013 Publication: Date 12August2013 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I. INTRODUCTION
The medium-voltage high-power rectifiers find their use in various industrial plants. Their application are found for pipeline pumps in petrochemical industry, for steel rolling mills in metal industry, for pumps in water pumping stations, for fans in cement industry, for traction in locomotive industry, and in many other applications [1-8]. Fig 1.1 shows a general block diagram of a typical medium-voltage high-power drive [9].

Figure 1. General block diagram of the MV drive The input is 3-phase utility supply which is converted to dc voltage by the rectifier shown above. The dc voltage magnitude can be fixed or adjustable depending upon the power electronic switches that are used for switching. Multipulse silicon controlled rectifiers, SCR, multi-pulse diode rectifiers, or pulse-width-modulated (PWM) rectifiers are commonly used rectifier topologies. In multipulse silicon controlled rectifier, SCR, or thyristor, the output dc voltage, V d, is a function of input line to line voltage, VLL, and the firing angle, , of thyristor as given below [10] Vd = 1.35 VLL cos ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (1) Thyristor firing pulses can be generated from the independently running pulse generators. In practice, it is not possible to achieve an independently running firing circuit that precisely maintains the desired phase control of

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Feedback Controller for a 3-Phase 6-Pulse Rectifier

firing pulses over the time. As time passes, the control angle either advances or retards gradually by increasing or decreasing the dc output voltage. In order to overcome this problem, a negative feedback integral control system can be used so that a closely regulated dc output voltage can be achieved and the output will not change gradually over the time. In negative feedback integral control system, the dc output voltage is compared with the desire voltage i.e. reference voltage and the error signal is processed to get firing angles such that a desired dc output voltage is obtained. In a negative feedback integral control system, the function of the firing pulse generator is to deliver correctly timed, properly shaped, firing pulses to the gates of the thyristors. II. 3-PHASE 6-PULSE RECTIFIER Fig 2 shows a simplified circuit diagram of a three-phase six-pulse thyristor rectifier. The inductance Ls is the total inductance including the line inductance, transformer reactance, and line reactor between the utility and the rectifier. For the ideal rectifier Ls is assumed to be zero. On the dc side a choke Ld is used to make the dc current ripple free [10-13]. The RC snubber circuits [14] for thyristor are not shown in Fig 2 but are considered in the computer model created in alternative transients program (ATP) [15].
Id va vb vc
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Figure 1 Simplified circuit diagram of a six-pulse thyristor rectifier

Ld

Figure 2. Simplified circuit diagram of a 3-phase 6-pulse thyristor rectifier Fig 3 shows a typical dc output voltage of a 3-phase 6-pulse rectifier shown in Fig 2. The equation (1) in section I depicts that the rectifier dc output voltage Vd is positive when is less than /2 and becomes negative for greater than /2. The technique to control the dc output voltage by controlling the phase of firing pulse, , is called phase-control technique [11].
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(f ile 6PSCR1Thy ristor.pl4; x-v ar t) v :POS

-NEG Figure 3. Typical dc output voltage with ac ripple

The power is delivered from utility to the load when the rectifier produces positive dc voltage. With a negative dc voltage, the rectifier operates as an inverter and the power is fed from the load back to utility. This often takes place during rapid deceleration when the kinetic energy of the rotor and its mechanical load is

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Feedback Controller for a 3-Phase 6-Pulse Rectifier

converted to the electric energy by the converter working in inverter mode and are used for dynamic braking. But irrespective of the polarity of the dc output voltage, the dc current I d is always positive.

III. NEGATIVE FEEDBACK CONTROLLER

There are two main types of feedback control system; a positive feedback system and a negative feedback system. In positive feedback system, the output variable and the control set point are added. In negative feedback system, the output variable is subtracted from the set point. The negative feedback system is more stable than positive feedback system [16]. In a negative feedback system, a Proportional Integral Derivative, PID, control is the most widely used control system in industry. In proportional branch, the error signal, the difference between the reference and the output, is multiplied by a constant. The proportional control is responsible for controlling the peak overshoot in the system. In integral branch, the error signal is integrated. The integral control is responsible for controlling steady-state error. In derivative branch, the error signal is differentiated. The derivative control is responsible for response time or settling time of the system.A negative feedback with integral control is presented in this paper to control the steady-state error in dc output voltage of a 3-phase 6-pulse rectifier by controlling the thyristor firing angle. Rectifier output voltage waveform and the waveform of integrator output is shown in Fig 4. The basic principle of the integral control method can be 1200 0.0 1500 explained by the Fig 4.
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Figure 4. Basic Principle of the Integral Control

21.67 36.67 [ms] -3 41.67 ac ripple of rectified 26.67 output it is seen that during interval between any two 21.67 26.67 voltage, 31.67 31.67 36.67 the *10 41.67 (f ile 6pscr2thy ristor.pl4; x-v ar t) t:XX0005 (f ile 6PSCR1Thy ristor.pl4; ar t) v :POS -NEG integral of this wave is zero. In other words, area A, above the successive firing points, thex-v net voltage-time Vref, and area B, below Vref are equal. If the ac ripple is applied to the input of an integrator circuit, the output waveform of the integrator will be same as the one given in Fig 4. The output waveform from integrator shows that its value is zero at each firing point.Since the mean output voltage is equal to the reference voltage, the ac ripple waveform can be obtained by subtracting the reference voltage from the actual rectified output waveform. This scheme ensures that each and every segment of the output ripple voltage has zero mean value, and therefore between every two firing points the mean value of the output voltage is equal to reference voltage. Thus a very tight pulse by pulse control is obtained over the rectified output voltage waveform and in fact this principle automatically provides a closely regulated closed-loop control of the output voltage [17]. 0 -1500 16.67 Examining 16.67 the -0.6

The integral control principle offers two important advantages. First, it is insensitive to changes in the supply frequency because the firing pulses are generated at the zero values of the integral of the ac ripple voltage. This means that, although the amplitude of the waveform of the integral of the error voltage changes with changing supply frequency, its zero values always correspond with the desired firing instants. Second, any spikes which appear on the output voltage waveform of the rectifier do not have any noticeable effect upon the timing of the firing pulses, since the integral value of the output ripple voltage is hardly influenced by these spikes. This is not the case with other types of pulse timing control, in which the timing of the firing pulses is determined from the instantaneous intersection of a timing waveform with the reference voltage [17]. A functional diagram of a 3-phase 6-pulse firing pulse generator using the integral control principle is shown in Fig. 5. The difference between the reference voltage and the rectified output voltage wave of the rectifier is fed as an input to the integrator. The output of the integrator is a replica of the output ripple voltage and therefore the output voltage of the integrator is the integral of the rectifier ripple voltage which has a zero-value at each firing point. This zero-value, by the action of a comparator, is translated into a timing clock pulse and the clock

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Feedback Controller for a 3-Phase 6-Pulse Rectifier

pulse generator. The clock pulses are fed as the trigger input to a 6-stage firing pulse generator circuit. The function of the firing circuit is both to shape and distribute the output firing pulses. Each successive clock pulse produces a firing pulse in regular sequence, one after another [17].

IV.

RESULTS

Fig 6 shows waveforms of the rectifier shown in Fig 2 with a negative feedback integral control, where va, vb, and vc are the input phase voltages of the utility supply, P1 thru P6 are the gate firing pulses for thyristors T1 thru T6 respectively and is the firing angle of the thyristors. It should be noted that the number of thyristor and gate is also the sequence of their firing. The value of line to line voltage, V LL, is 460 Vac, firing angle of 300, and from equation (1) the reference voltage is set at 538 Vdc.

Figure 5. Integral Control Firing Pulse Generator During interval I, thyristors T1 and T6 are conduct assuming T6 was conducting prior to turn on of T1. The positive dc voltage is vp with respect to ground is va and the negative bus voltage vn i.e. equal to vb. The dc output voltage can be found from vd=vp-vn=vab. The line currents can be given as ia=Id, ib=-Id, and ic=0. During interval II, thyristor T6 is turned off after T2 turns on and the dc current I d is commuted from T6 to T2. Thus T1 and T2 are conducting. The positive dc voltage vp is still the same i.e. vp=va but the negative bus voltage vn is equal to vc. The dc output voltage can be found from vd=vp-vn=vac. The line currents can be given as, ia=Id, ib=0, and ic=-Id. Following the same procedure all the voltage and current waveforms in other interval can be obtained.

V. CONCLUSION
A negative feedback control system with integral control principle is explained and applied to a 3phase 6-pulse rectifier. The control system as well as the rectifier is modeled in ATP. The controller is designed to control the dc output voltage by adjusting the phase angle of thyristor firing signals. The generated firing 2000 20 pulses, the dc output voltage, as well as input current and voltage waveforms obtained from ATP are in 1500 agreement with the theory presented. Thus a successful implementation of negative feedback control system is 20 15 the steady-state error of a 3-phase 6-pulse rectifier by integral control method. 1000 achieved to control
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10 15 -1000 200 Integrator output 5 10 15 0 Gate Signal -1500 P110 0 5 16.67 21.67 26.67 0 Gate Signal -2000 P210 50 5 10 ile 6pscrBase.pl4; x-v ar t) v :VINA v :VINB v :VINC -5 0 Gate Signal (f P3 5 0 Gate Signal P4 -5 5 -5 0 -10 Gate Signal P5 -10 0 Gate Signal P6 -5 -10 -5 I II -15 -15 -10 -5 -15 -10 -20 -15 -10 10 0 5 -20 (f -15 (f ile ile 6PSCR1Thy 6PSCR1Thy ristor.pl4; ristor.pl4; x-v x-v ar ar t) t) t:P2 t:P1 0 5 10 -20 (f ile 6PSCR1Thy ristor.pl4; x-v ar t) t:P3 -15 www.theijes.com 0 5 10The IJES -20 (f ile 6PSCR1Thy ristor.pl4; x-v ar t) t:P4 0 5 10 -20 (f ile 6PSCR1Thy ristor.pl4; x-v ar t) t:P5 0 5 10
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Feedback Controller for a 3-Phase 6-Pulse Rectifier

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Figure 6. Waveform of an ideal six-pulse thyristor rectifier operating at =300

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