Performance evaluation on a novel power converter with minimum number of switches for a six-phase switched reluctance motor

In this paper, a novel converter with the minimum number of power switches is comparatively investigated with an asymmetric half bridge (AHB) converter by individually applying them to a six-phase switched reluctance motor (SRM). To begin with, topology, operation principle, and electrical equations are analyzed based on an SRM with double-phase excitation. Compared with AHB converter, the number of power switches is reduced to half and no additional devices are added. Besides, every switch is shared by two adjacent phases and works in turn. Steady-state, transient, and fault tolerance performances are discussed and compared by the means of simulations and experiments. The results validate that the novel converter is able to provide a higher output power, a less torque ripple, and a faster dynamic response, but the fault tolerance ability is inferior to the AHB converter.