Design and Development of Multi-pulse Rectifier Based DC Injection Circuit for More Electric Aircraft Application

This paper presents a multi-pulse rectifier with a zigzag autotransformer and hybrid Cockroft-Dickson injection circuit for power quality improvement in More Electric Aircraft (MEA). The proposed converter modifies the input current to nearly sinusoidal and brings the total harmonic distortion up to 3.08%, which meets the IEEE-519 standard. Using a zigzag autotransformer automatically eliminates the need for zero sequence blocking transformer, and thereby results in lesser kVA rating. Also, the proposed multi-pulse rectifier is simpler, robust, reliable, and cost effective. The proposed injection circuit makes 12-pulse rectifier operate as 24-pulse, thus reduces the magnetic rating and uses power effectively. Hence, the proposed hybrid injection circuit works as a pulse multiplier has low voltage stress on capacitors and low output voltage drop. It removes the disadvantages associated with Cockroft and Dickson when used as an individual injection circuit. The simulation is done in MATLAB/Simulink environment, and the results are compare with experimental results. Further, the power quality indices of the proposed converter are compared with the similar converters in literature.