Investigation of Harmonic Distortion in Multi-Pulse Rectifiers for Large Capacitive Charging Applications

Abstract

The United States Navy is transitioning its fleet to utilize more high power electrical loads. Many of these loads are not only higher power than previously seen aboard ships, but also operate in a very transient nature with loads that are much more capacitive than previously seen. In this transition, power conversion becomes more important than ever before. Converting AC power to DC power can be very inefficient due to the presence of harmonics. Previous work has shown that it is possible to reduce these harmonics through the artificial fabrication of additional phases to input to a rectifier, but in all of these works, the load has been assumed to be purely resistive in nature, or slightly inductive. This work proposes to investigate the effects of these harmonics on a large capacitive load Ð as would be seen in the naval applications discussed above. Discussion below proposes the design and simulation of 4 different types of rectifiers in Simulink in order to obtain a preliminary understanding of what would be expected to be present in this system as well as provide a platform for the design and tuning of controls for the converter. After fabricating a selection of these rectifiers, the hardware would be used to validate the simulation results. This work could provide insights into the issues that arise when converting high pulsed power from AC to DC to source a large capacitive load. It could also lead to providing useful models for implementation into future shipboard designs, whether for simulation purposes or integrating into hardware-in-the-loop designs.

Document Details

Document Type
DoD Grant Award
Publication Date
Jun 10, 2016
Source ID
N000141612248

Entities

People

  • David A. Wetz

Organizations

  • Office of Naval Research
  • United States Navy
  • University of Texas at Arlington

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Distributed Systems and Data Platform Development
  • Electrical Engineering