Abstract:

Battery locomotives are widely used in underground mines. In the past, speed control was usually done by connecting an auxiliary resistor in the armature circuit of the drive motor. This type of motor speed control has many disadvantages. In the last years of the Twentieth Century, DC-chopper based on the thyristors have been widely applied to electric trains in general and mine locomotives in particular. As a result, the efficiency and service life of the mine battery locomotive drive system have been significantly increased. From the beginning of the 21st Century to the present, a series of new power electronic devices have been invented and quickly put into practical application, so that the train control systems have seen a fundamental change in both quantity and quality. This paper presents some results of research, design, and manufacture of a control circuit based on the pulse chopping method using an Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) for mine battery locomotives