Unipolar converter for switched reluctance motor drives with power factor improvement

In this paper an innovative converter topology is presented that allows to improve the performance of a Switched Reluctance Motor drive, aimed to equip home appliances. The proposed topology is based on a modified C-dump converter configuration, where the energy recovery stage acts as an active power factor controller for off-line operation. This is made possible by the development of a new technique to manage the freewheeling energy, that is recovered back to the DC bus by mean of a suitable HF transformer. The proposed approach allows to omit the PFC stage, that is normally included in motor drives devoted to home appliances applications in order to comply with power quality requirements. Moreover, the proposed converter topology features only low side configuration switches, allowing to easily integrate all the power semiconductors on a single chip exploiting smart power technologies.