Reduction of Common-Mode Radiation in Electrical Drive Systems with Multi-Level Topology Inverters

In inverter-driven drive systems, common-mode currents occur and can lead to high field emissions in battery electric vehicles (BEV) and aircraft and cause failures in subsystems. Filters and multilevel inverter topologies can be used to counteract such effects. In this work, the power train is identified and characterized as a coupling path for common-mode disturbances and an analytical approach for the prediction of radiated common-mode emissions is presented. A multilevel inverter is compared to a conventional inverter topology with respect to conducted interferences in the real operating environment. Finally, the effects of different inverter topologies and their switching patterns on the radiated field are evaluated in practical tests in a common-mode test bench.