The Development of an Universal Six Leg Inverter for Electrical Drives Laboratory Experiments

To set-up an educational electric drives laboratory with industrial motors, power electronics is required, not only for control, but also for regenerating the drive energy. Undergraduate and graduate students can first practice the behavior of the electric drive in simulation. After passing the simulation experiments, the students can repeat the experiments on the experimental set-up. After estimating and testing the control parameters in simulation, the experimental set-up can be supplied with those parameters. The bidirectional power-flow in a dual motor set-up, has to be regenerative. For this, an experimental set-up containing two back to back coupled inverters, with common DC bus, was developed. In the paper, the design of the experimental set-up is outlined, together with typical measurement results from the set-up. The application of interchangeable gate-drivers, currents-sense and isolated power-supplies is detailed, required for fast repairs or changing components.