GEN073

Knowledge Base Document

Technical Support Department, U79, Newtown

Title: Output voltage harmonic distortion of Control Techniques a.c.

variable speed drives

Document EMC Harmonics Product General

Category: Category:

Credits Circulation: Drive Centre

Revision History
Revision Date Revising Author Authorised By Comments
1.0 12/11/12 Colin Hargis Jon Atkinson

Summary of Contents
This note gives basic information about the harmonic distortion of the output voltage of Control
Techniques a.c. drives. It does not refer to the harmonic distortion of the input current, which is the
subject of separate publications and data from Control Techniques.

Summary
Typical best (lowest) VTHD in PWM mode 54.4%
Intrinsic VTHD in quasi-square mode 31.1%
It is intrinsic in the technique used that the voltage THD can never be better than 31.1%.

Explanation
From the equivalent circuit of an induction motor it can be seen that the magnetic flux is
produced by the current Im which is proportional to the voltage (V1) and inversely
proportional to the frequency applied.

Figure 1 Equivalent circuit of an induction motor

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An a.c. variable speed drive uses Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) in order to generate an
approximately sinusoidal magnetic flux waveform in the driven induction motor using a high-
efficiency switching technique in the power stage.

This gives an output voltage which is rich in frequency content, but with a strong and
controllable component at the wanted motor power frequency. The carrier frequency or
switching frequency of the inverter is much higher than the motor working frequency, so it
generates correspondingly little magnetic flux in the motor1.

This behaviour is intrinsic to the nature of inverter drives using high-frequency switching
techniques to give frequency conversion with good electrical efficiency. It does not depend
on particular details of the design or operational mode.

The ratio of carrier to working frequency has an important effect on the flux waveform quality.
A ratio less than 12 is usually unacceptable because of the generation of subharmonics

1
Magnetic flux density is inversely proportional to frequency
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which prevent smooth operation of the motor. Therefore for a usable output frequency of
600Hz the drive must offer a carrier frequency of at least 7.2 kHz. If the higher carrier
frequency is not available then an alternative is to use quasi-square operation, when the
phase voltage is a square wave at the motor operating frequency, and some of the resulting
simple harmonics are cancelled because they are co-phasal in the three phases (i.e. zero-
sequence).

Total harmonic distortion

Simplified calculated THD in PWM mode 57.3%
Best measured THD in PWM mode 54.4%
Calculated THD in Quasi-square mode 31.1%
During over-modulation in PWM mode the THD tends towards a minimum possible value of
31.1%.

Appendix – calculations
PWM output:
The THD for single-phase PWM can be expressed very simply, but there is no general
analysis for 3-phase PWM modulation to give a closed form expression for THD. In practice
a number of special techniques are used to give a good balance between waveform quality
and efficiency, which add to the complexity of the analysis.
Calculating the THD from a simplified published analysis2 with a modulation depth of 1
(lowest THD case) gave a THD of 57.3%.
Measurement of a typical Control Techniques inverter set at the maximum voltage available
without over-modulation gave a THD of 54.4%.
Over-modulation can be used to increase the available voltage at the wanted frequency, with
the penalty of increased simple harmonic distortion (as opposed to PWM modulation effects).
In the limit, extreme over-modulation results in a quasi-square output voltage, and the THD
then becomes the same as for a quasi-square inverter. This then represents an absolute
lower limit for the available THD. The calculation for this is given in the next section.
Quasi-square output:
This is obtained by taking the difference between two rectangular phase voltage waveforms
with 120° phase difference.
Take the p-p amplitude of each waveform to be (the d.c. link voltage)
Then the resulting waveform has p-p amplitude with zero-voltage intervals for 120° and
peak voltage for 240° of the cycle.
R.m.s. value is given by:

R.m.s. value of the sinusoidal component is given by:

where the factor comes from Fourier analysis of the square wave and the
factor comes from the subtraction of vectors at 120°.

Then the THD is = 31.1%

2
Mohan, Undeland & Robbins, Power Electronics, Wiley 2008: p133
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