Abstract

AC electric locomotives that use a number of interleaved four-quadrant converters generate high-frequency switching harmonics which may stimulate certain resonances in traction power supply systems (TPSSs). A windowed selective harmonic elimination pulse-width modulation (SHE-PWM) method is proposed to suppress such resonances. Owing to the windowed design and the precalculated solutions, the proposed method covers the wide potential resonant frequency range and addresses the resonant frequency variation while keeping the low switching frequency of the traction converters. The proposed windowed SHE-PWM is fully tested with a closed-loop controller in a simulation model with the TPSS and the ac electric locomotive. Comparative simulation results show that the windowed SHE-PWM is an effective alternative that overcomes the resonance suppression limitations of the conventional phase-shifted PWM (PS-PWM). The performance of proposed windowed SHE-PWM on an experimental equivalent resonant circuit is further evaluated and compared with PS-PWM. Both simulation and experimental results verify the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed method.