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Concept
Rotary converter
Summary
A rotary converter is a type of electrical machine which acts as a mechanical rectifier, inverter or frequency converter.
Rotary converters were used to convert alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC), or DC to AC power, before the advent of chemical or solid state power rectification and inverting. They were commonly used to provide DC power for commercial, industrial and railway electrification from an AC power source.
The rotary converter can be thought of as a motor-generator, where the two machines share a single rotating armature and set of field coils. The basic construction of the rotary converter consists of a DC generator (dynamo) with a set of slip rings tapped into its rotor windings at evenly spaced intervals. When a dynamo is spun the electric currents in its rotor windings alternate as it rotates in the magnetic field of the stationary field windings. This alternating current is rectified by means of a commutator, which allows direct current to be extracted from the rotor. This principle is taken advantage of by energizing the same rotor windings with AC power, which causes the machine to act as a synchronous AC motor. The rotation of the energized coils excites the stationary field windings producing part of the direct current. The other part is alternating current from the slip rings, which is directly rectified into DC by the commutator. This makes the rotary converter a hybrid dynamo and mechanical rectifier. When used in this way it is referred to as a synchronous rotary converter or simply a synchronous converter. The AC slip rings also allow the machine to act as an alternator.
The device can be reversed and DC applied to the field and commutator windings to spin the machine and produce AC power. When operated as a DC to AC machine it is referred to as an inverted rotary converter.
One way to envision what is happening in an AC-to-DC rotary converter is to imagine a rotary reversing switch that is being driven at a speed that is synchronous with the power line.
Official source
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