EXPERIMENTAL AND SIMULATION RESULTS OF MOS-

CONTROLLED THYRISTOR FOR AC SWITCH AND AC

VOLTAGE CONTROLLER
M.A.Choudhry and Jill J. Ye
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
West Virginia University
Morgantown, WV 26506
based control board is designed to control signal-
Abstract
phase voltage controller. A PCL-711B data
This paper presents voltagdcurrent characteristics acquisition board is used for analog to digital and
of ac switch using MOS-Controlled thyristors. digital to analog conversion.
IBM PC 286 based control board is designed to
control single-phase voltage controller. 2:Simulation Results
Experimental results are similar to the results
obtained from simulation except the turn-on
Figure 1 shows the single line diagram of
transient.
an ac switch. The MCTl will turn on and turn off
when a voltage signal of -12V and +12V is
1: Introduction
applied between gate and the anode. Figure 2
shows the gate signal, load current, and voltage
MOS-Controlled thyristor (MCT)
across MCT when the ac switch is turned off at a
combines the ease of MOS gate control with high
load current of 4.343A for an inductive load. The
voltage and high current capability of SCR [ 11.
voltage across MCTl is more than 1kV due to a
Unlike the gate turn off thyristor (GTO) which
large di/dt on the load side. Figure 3 shows the
requires about one fifth of the anode current to same voltages when the MCTs are turned off at a
turn off, the MCT can be turned on and off with
load current of 0.2686A. The transient voltage
a small amount of current pulse applied between
across MCTl was nearly 4 kV when the MCTs
the gate and the anode terminals [2]. The MCT
were turned off at a load current of 0.2686A
has 50 times higher current density at 2V forward
without snubber circuits across MCTs. The
voltage drop as compared to insulated gate
simulation results show that the snubber circuits
bipolar transistor (IGBT) [3]. A typical turn-on
are needed across MCTs and the MCTs should
time and turn-off time of an MCT of 75 A, 600 V
be turned off when the load current is nearly zero.
is 0.4 ps and 1.25 ps respectively. The higher
dv/dt capability of the device allows the use of
smaller snubber circuit.
AC voltage controller is a thyristor switch
that is connected between ac supply and load.
The power applied to the load can be controlled
by varying rms value of ac voltage applied to the
load. The load voltage can be changed by
changing the firing angle of the MCT.
The MCT is simulated as an ac switch and
an ac voltage controller using Pspice. IBM 286 Fig. 1 Single line diagram of an ac switch.

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0094-2898195 $04.000 1995 IEEE
 I I
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I 1
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Load current

Load current

Fig. 3 Turn-off of MCT at a load current of 0.2686A.

a
 20"t .......i.......+.......+.......*...
...
Figure 4 shows the single line diagram of ?
a single-phase voltage controller. The output
voltage and current can be changed by switching
MCT T, and MCT T, on and off. The output
voltage will be nearly zero when both MCTs are
off and almost full voltage will appear across the
load when both MCTs are completely on. The
rms value of the load voltage can be calculated by
.*wy+..

4
.............+.......*.......*.......+.......*.......+.....
...........+.......*.......i.......+.......+.......*.......
OR t.... ...........+.......*.......i.......+.......+.......*.......
...
using the following equation [4].
4 OR
i f \ n t
1

: :
V,=V, [ l/x (p-a +1/2 ( sin 2a- sin 2P))I'"

where ct is the firing angle of MCT and p is the

200Vt
hi
.......4 ...............+.......

.......*.
5nr 10ns 15nr
i.......+.......+.......
2Oma 2%. 30"s
......+.......+.......*.......i...............+.....
35ns
...
........
40.1

angle when the load current goes to zero. P is

equal to x for a resistive load. The rms value of .ZO"+....+
Load vo1t.p.
.......+....... i.......*.......+.......+.
+

2WV t.......+..... ..........+.......+.......*.......+.......+.......

the load current is calculated as +

I, = VJZ
where Z is the load impedance. Figure 5 shows
.............*.......*.......+...............*.......
the gate signal, source voltage, load current, load .2oov+..........
"0lI.l. .C.O.. Y11

voltage, and voltage across MCT for an inductive
load (R= 13 S2 ,L= 33 mH) with a firing angle of
135". The load voltage goes to zero when the
MCT is turned off High frequency voltage
oscillations appear due to the natural response of
the circuit.
*l
Fig. 4 Single line diagram of a single-phase
voltage controller.
Fig. 5 Voltage and current waveforms for single-
phase voltage controller (a=135').
3: Experimental Results
Figure 6 shows the system block diagram
for the experiment. The whole system consists of
an ac source, load, ac switch, and control part.
The ac switch is connected between source and
the load. The input to MCTs of ac switch is from
a firing circuit that gives h12V. The control part
consists of a step-down transformer, IBM286
computer, PCL-711B multilab board, control
board, current sensor, and a firing circuit. The
step-down transformer is used to convert the
source voltage to a 0-5Vac signal. This ac signal
is given as an input to the PCL-711B board. The
current is measured using an LEM current sensor
that gives an input signal to PCL-711B board.
IBM286 computer is used to store the software
and do all the control. The firing angle is entered
from the computer keyboard. The computer reads
this value, converts it as a counter number, and
sends this number to a counter. When the
program is running, it measures the voltage, and

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 M . 5 . L=33m, alpha = 90 ac switch
Config. #I,
ac s w i t c h
I -s 3
i

"q-----.-,l------j
-1 0.5 0 0.5 1
Y lo4
z
Fig. 6 System block diagram for the experiment.
w

starts the counter when the voltage crosses zero. g o

When the counter finishes counting, it turns on f -im
cn
the MCT. A firing circuit is used to drive MCT. ;-200
> - 1 0 8 d - 4 - 2 0 2 4 6 8
The input to the firing circuit is 0-5V dc signal Time (sec) x 10"
and the output of the firing circuit is f12V dc
voltage. When the input signal is 0, the output of Fig. 7 Transient voltage across MCTl at the turn-
the firing circuit is +12V and the MCT is turned on of MCT2.
off. When the input signal is 5V, output voltage
ofthe firing circuit is -12V and the MCT is turned
on. PCL-71 lb multilab board is a data acquisition
board that is installed on R3M PC computer. It
has 8 channel analog inputs, one channel analog
output, 16 bits digital inputs, and 16 bits digital 001 om
outputs. A switch is used to start and stop the
whole system. The program checks the switch at
the beginning. If the switch is on, it will start the
program by initializing the counter. The user can -im
stop the system by turning off the switch. The -200
a02 401 001 om
MCTs w ill be turned off when the current passes Tn* (sec)

through zero.
A large voltage transient was observed
E- 3 -
across MCTl when MCT2 was turned on for ac e 2.
35 1-
switch application. The voltage transient ol&+&m%
increased considerably when the source voltage -1 .
om 0.01 0 aoi 0.02
was increased more than 9OV. Figure 7 shows the Tnn (sec)

voltage transient across MCTl at the turn on of

MCT2 for an inductive load. A source voltage of
103V rms is applied to the load. The source
voltage is obtained from a 1.4kVA, 1OA single-
I
phase transformer. The voltage transient was -" 0.b 0.m 0 0.01 0.m
T i (sec)
much smaller for a resistive load. Figure 8 shows
the load current, source voltage, MCT gate
signal, and load voltage for an inductive load. The
Fig. 8 Voltage and current waveforms for single-
computer will monitor the current through the
phase voltage controller (a=135').
MCT. The MCT will be turned off when the load
current is between f 0.25A.

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4: Conclusions 6: References

The simulation results for an ac switch [ 13. V.A.K. Temple,"Advances in MOS-

and single-phase voltage co~trollerare similar to Controlled Thyristor Technology," PCIM.
the experimental results except the voltage November 1989, pp. 12-15.
transient at the tum-on of MCT. The ac switch [2]. M.A. Choudhry and M.
requires snubber circuits in order to keep the Mubeen,"Evaluation of MOS-Controlled
voltage transients within acceptable range. The Thyristor (MCT) at 270 Volt dc for Static
MCT should be turned off when the load current and Dynamic Loads," Technical Report, Universal
is in the range of *0.25A. Energy systems, Inc., Dayton, OH, 1991.
[3]. V.A.K. Temple,"MCTs-thyristorsfor the
5: Acknowledgements Future," Powertechnics magazine,November
1989, pp. 2 1-24.
This research work was supported by [4]. Muhammad h. Rashid, Power Electronics,
National Research Center for Coal and energy, Prentice Hall, 1993.
and Allegheny Power Systems.

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