Title:  Soft-Switching Solid-State Transformer for Traction Applications

Committee: 

Dr. Saeedifard, Advisor

Dr. Divan, Co-Advisor  

Dr. Graber, Chair

Dr. Habetler

Abstract:

The objective of the proposed research is to design and control a modular soft-switching solid-state transformer (M-S4T) for traction applications. In the proposed research, a 3.3 kV reverse-blocking (RB) device, one of the key components in the M-S4T, is fully characterized. A unique voltage sharing phenomenon within the RB device is analyzed and the guidance of using this device in the M-S4T is provided.  In addition, a decoupled quasi-real-time (QRT) model of the M-S4T is proposed for hardware-in-loop (HIL) simulation and the accuracy of the QRT model is verified experimentally. To control the M-S4T, a control architecture for synchronization and communication between each modules is proposed and the proposed control architecture is verified by HIL simulation on OPAL-RT platform.