EE-321 N

Lecture-5
Thyristor Protection Through
Snubber Circuits

Introduction
A thyristor needs protection against
overvoltages, overcurrents, high dv/dt and
high di/dt
O/V and O/C protection can generally be
achieved by zener diodes and fuses etc.
However, device is protected against high
dv/dt and high di/dt using snubber circuits

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Types of Snubbers
1. Turn-ON snubbers to reduce sudden rise of
current (di/dt)
2. Turn-OFF snubbers to reduce sudden rise of
voltage (dv/dt)
3. Snubbers for reducing v & i stresses on the
device during switching (for power
transistors)
4. Energy recovery snubbers
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di/dt snubber

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di/dt snubber
Under steady state operation, Dm will conduct
when thyristor T1 is OFF
If T1 is triggered when Dm is still conducting,
di/dt can be very high
In practice, the di/dt is limited by adding a
series inductor Ls (also includes stray
inductance)
di
Vs Ls
dt

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di Vs

dt Ls

dv/dt Snubber

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dv/dt Snubber
Series combination of R & C shunted across the
device
C takes care of dv/dt while R limits the discharge
current when thyristor is switched ON
A more effective variation is the polarized
snubber in which there is additional diode in
parallel with R
The diode bypasses the resistor to reduce the
response time of RC for +ve spikes (which may
turn ON the device)
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Polarized Snubber

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Analysis
If switch S1 is closed at t = 0, a step voltage will
be applied across the thyristor T1
The dv/dt may be high enough to turn on the
device
The dv/dt can be limited by connecting a
capacitor Cs across T1
When the thyristor T1 is turned on, the
discharge current of capacitor is limited by
resistor Rs
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Analysis
The circuit dv/dt can be found approximately
from:
dv 0.632Vs 0.632Vs

dt

RsCs
The snubber circuit can be designed based on
the known value of the dv/dt for a device
The value of Rs is found from the discharge
current ITD
Vs
Rs
I TD
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Design Example (Ex. 7.4 MHR)

For the circuit configuration shown, input voltage is Vs =
200 V with load resistance R = 5 . The load and stray
inductances are negligible and the thyristor is operated
at a frequency of fs = 2 kHz. If the required dv/dt is 100
V/s and the discharge current is to be limited to 100 A.
Determine: (a) the values of Rs, Cs,
(b) snubber loss, and
(c) the power rating of snubber resistor.

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Solution on Board

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Try Yourself
For an RL load with R = 2.5 , find the min.
value of L so that the thyristor switch is not
damaged due to high di/dt. The di/dt limit for
the thyristor is 50 A/s.

500 V

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