A Basic Power Electronic Laboratory Experiment Allowing Comprehensive and Structured Learning: Multi-Phase Capacitive Loaded Full-Bridge Rectifier

This paper provides a compact and fundamental level power electronics laboratory experiment about capacitive loaded three single-phase full-bridge diode rectifiers. While the procedure of the experiment is simple, the experiment provides wide range of opportunities for comprehensive learning on the important aspects of power electronics. The nonlinear circuit behavior of the rectifier and performance characterization are demonstrated as the conventional experiments. Moreover, the influence of the power source impedance on the power quality, the type and size of filtering for harmonic reduction are demonstrated on the single-phase rectifier. Furthermore, the three-phase connection type of the rectifiers with the delta and Y connection are utilized for isolating the triplen and nontriplen harmonics. Thus, the converter generated harmonics are observed and a good comprehension of them is provided. The structured, step-by-step experiment has been applied in the undergraduate power electronics courses for several years and has been confirmed as an efficient method for teaching power electronics at fundamental level. The experimental setup is easy to implement in terms of hardware and operation and has overall low cost, such that it can be implemented in any power electronics laboratory around the world.