This is the final volume in a four-volume series concerning POWER ELEC TRONIC CONVERTERS. The first volume studies AC/DC conversion, the second studies AC/ AC conversion, and the third DC/DC conversion. This final volume deals with DC/AC conversion, i.e. with inverters. At the output of an inverter fed by a DC voltage supply, this voltage is alternatively found with one polarity and then with the other; in other words, an AC voltage made up of square pulses is obtained. Filtering must be carried out if, as is normally the case, a virtually sinusoidal voltage is required: this problem of filtering underlies the entire study of inverters. In some applications, the load itself provides the filtering. In others, a filter is installed between the inverter and the load; however, as it will be shown in Chap. 2, in cases where the filtered voltage is at industrial network frequency and comprises only a single square-wave pulse per half-cycle, the filter becomes bulky and costly, and the results obtained are poor. Filtering problems explain the considerable development of inverters during the last years: - Firstly there is increasing use of pulse width modulation: each half-cycle is cut up into several pulses of suitable widths; this greatly simplifies filtering. The use of a chopping frequency which is much greater than the frequency of the fundamental components of the inverter output voltage and current has only been made possible by progress in the field of semiconductor devices.
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