A Practical Primer On Motor Drives (Part 12): Variable Frequency Motor Drives

Focus:

Variable frequency drives (VFDs), variable-speed drives (VSDs), inverter drives, or, more commonly, motor drives are systems that provide pulse-width-modulated (PWM) outputs for precise control of the applied stator voltage and frequency. After a brief discussion of VFD uses, this section explains VFD operation including a discussion of VFD architecture and topologies. The latter includes a detailed description of the popular dc bus (link) topologies including the voltage-sourced inverter, the current-sourced inverter, the load-commuted inverter and the matrix converter or cycloconverter. This part also explains the common pulse-width modulation (PWM) techniques—carrier-based and space-vector pulse-width modulation.

What you’ll learn:

• How to understand the operation of variable frequency drives including their different architectures and topologies
• How to understand the operation of carrier-based and space-vector pulse-width modulation techniques

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Author & Publication:

Ken Johnson, Teledyne LeCroy, Chestnut Ridge, N.Y., How2Power Today, Jan 16 2017

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