Question What is a 6-pulse converter? What makes it 6-pulse as opposed to 12-pulse or 18-pulse?

Answer One way to think about the "pulse number" of a rectifier circuit is to look at the pulses of the power frequency voltage that show up in the output voltage of the rectifier. Therefore, the pulse number of the rectifier is related to the circuit arrangement of the rectifier devices and the connections to the power system with transformers, if applicable. Rectifiers can have thyristors or diodes for rectifying elements. Thyristors allow controlled voltage output, but need gating circuits and controls to work. Diodes are more simple and rugged, and require no control, but the output voltage depends on the input voltage. Ac drives that do not require regeneration use diodes as source converters because they are low cost and the fixed output voltage is perfect for the dc link of a Pulse Width Modulated (PWM) inverter. The history of rectifiers is filled with interesting circuit types using 3-pulse midpoint connections, interphase transformers, and 6-phase sources. However, the rectifier practice has been refined to the point where the 3-phase, 6-pulse bridge rectifier is the most commonly used connection. It is also the building block for other higher order connections. A simple diagram of the 6-pulse bridge is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Basic 3-phase 6-pulse diode rectifier circuit With a 3-phase input voltage, the output voltage of the 6-pulse bridge rectifier has 6 pulses of power frequency voltage in one period of the power system frequency. Or, the output ripple voltage of the 3phase rectifier is 6 x the power frequency. If the input frequency is 60 Hz, the dc ripple frequency is 6 x 60 = 360 Hz. Higher order harmonics also exist, but are outside the scope of this discussion. The ripple effect can be seen in Figure 2, where a 3-phase voltage waveform is shown with the negative voltage pulses rectified (above the x-axis). The envelope of the unfiltered dc ripple voltage, shown in black, is emphasized to show how the peaks of the voltage waveform are picked off by the diodes. The six pulses of the peaks form the output voltage of the 6-pulse rectifier.

Figure 2. Three Rectified Sine Waves Higher Pulse-number Converters Higher order pulse-number converters can be formed using the 6-pulse bridge as a building block. The product of 6 times the number of 6-pulse bridges gives the overall pulse number of the converter system. For example, 6 times 2 bridges gives 12-pulse; 6 times 3 bridges gives 18-pulse, etc. Of course, more than just additional converters are needed; the proper phase shift must be applied to the voltages at the input to the converters to obtain true 12 or 18-pulse output. Based on the definition given earlier, the 12pulse rectifier has 12 pulses in the output voltage for one period of the power system frequency. An 18pulse rectifier has 18 pulses in the output voltage for one period. What happens in a 12-pulse rectifier is a second set of 6-pulse waves is added to the output, with a 30 electrical degree offset to the first set that fills in the valleys between the 6-pulse peaks. So, what's the reason for using higher pulse numbers? Most often, the motivation is reduction of harmonic currents the rectifier injects into the ac power system. For example, a 12-pulse rectifier may have about 13% current total harmonic distortion (THD), while a 6-pulse converter can have 35% current THD - a big difference for a large rectifier. Another benefit is less ripple in the output voltage, but because this is usually internal to the ac drive, it is not as visible as the harmonic currents at the input. As usual, your feedback is welcome. Use the link at the left of this column to respond or ask questions.

.1 Circuit Representation. The following diagram shows the practical three phase diode bridge rectfier.

Figure 6. Three phase diode bridge rectifier.

4.2 Description of Circuit Operation A filter capacitor is connected to the dc side of the rectifier. The supply side transmission line is represented by the R and L in series. It is not very difficult to understand the operation of this circuit. The diodes are numbered according to the sequence in which they begin to conduct. Out of the diodes 1, 3 and 5 with common cathode connections, the diode connected to the highest positive phase voltage would conduct. Similarly, out of the diodes 2,4 and 6, with common anode connections, the diode connected to the most negative phase voltage would conduct. If the three phase voltage waveforms are drawn and examined, it will be easily seen that the diodes conduct in the sequence 1,2,3and so on. Each diode conducts for 120 degrees per cycle, and a new diode begins to conduct after a 60 degree interval. The output waveform, Vd, which consists of portions of the line-to-line ac voltage waveforms, repeats with a 60 degree interval making it a six-pulse rectifier. 4.3 Circuit Representation for Pspice Simulation

Figure 7. Three-phase diode bridge rectifier with nodes numbered for Pspice. 4.4 Pspice Code for three-phase diode bridge rectifier The same diode model developed for the single phase rectifier has been used here as well. The rest of the codes are straight forward. To overcome convergence problem, some initial conditions have been assigned to the inductor current and capacitor voltage. Practical Three-Phase, Diode-Bridge Rectifier *3-phase voltages V1 1 0 SIN(0 170V 60 0 0 0) V2 2 0 SIN(0 170V 60 0 0 -120) V3 3 0 SIN(0 170V 60 0 0 -240) *ac-line inductance LS1 4 1 0.1mH IC=2 LS2 5 2 0.1mH IC=2 LS3 6 3 0.1mH IC=2 *ac-line resistance RS1 7 4 1000m RS2 8 5 1000m RS3 9 6 1000m *load resistance and smoothing capacitor. RLOAD 10 11 30.0 CD 10 11 1000uF IC=160V *diode switches D1 7 10 PDIODE D3 8 10 PDIODE

D5 9 10 PDIODE D4 11 7 PDIODE D6 11 8 PDIODE D2 11 9 PDIODE * .MODEL PDIODE D(IS=1E-10 N=1 BV=1200 IBV=10E-3 VJ=0.7) .options abstol=1n reltol=0.01 vntol=0.01 itl5=120000 .TRAN 0.1m 1000m UIC .PROBE .END

4.5 Simulation Results

Figure 8. Output voltage compared with the 3-phase input voltage.

Figure 8. Current through diode D1.

Figure 9. Current drawn from phase voltage V1 compared with the current drawn by the load resistor.

Is it possible to obtain more pulses than twice the number of phases in a rectifier circuit? The answer to this question is yes: especially in polyphase circuits. Through the creative use of transformers, sets of full-wave rectifiers may be paralleled in such a way that more than six pulses of DC are produced for three phases of AC. A 30o phase shift is introduced from primary to secondary of a three-phase transformer when the winding configurations are not of the same type. In other words, a transformer connected either Y- or -Y will exhibit this 30o phase shift, while a transformer connected Y-Y or - will not. This phenomenon may be exploited by having one transformer connected Y-Y feed a bridge rectifier, and have another transformer connected Y- feed a second bridge rectifier, then parallel the DC outputs of both rectifiers. (Figure below) Since the ripple voltage waveforms of the two rectifiers' outputs are phase-shifted 30o from one another, their superposition results in less ripple than either rectifier output considered separately: 12 pulses per 360o instead of just six: