The purpose of this thesis is to design, develop, implement and test a novel soft-switching inverter topology suitable for switched reluctance motor drives. Present research being done in the field of switched reluctance motor drive inverters, including soft-switching inverters, is discussed. The novel topology is presented and the principle of operation is described in detail. The validity of the topology is verified through simulation. The various components of the system are designed and the hardware implementation is presented. Experiments carried out to verify the operation of this inverter are explained. Results are presented and comparison is made between hard switching and soft switching inverter topologies. Conclusions are drawn regarding the effectiveness of the proposed topology.
