Industrial Engineer · phase 16 of 16 · noun

Common DC Bus

Architecture in which multiple drive sections share one DC link so energy can be exchanged between axes or supplied by a common converter.

The Explain card

Plain English
A common DC bus system connects several inverter sections to one shared DC link, fed by one converter. Energy a braking axis puts on the bus is used by an axis that is motoring at the same moment.
Example
A paper machine has a dozen sections on a common bus. Unwind sections regenerate while drive sections motor, and the front end only supplies the difference.
Why it matters
It cuts the size of the front end, removes braking resistors from most axes and saves energy on any machine with axes pulling against each other. It also puts every axis on one bus, so a fault on the bus stops the whole machine.
Hook
One reservoir, many drives, energy passed hand to hand.

Word knowledge

How the word is built, where it came from, and what it sits beside in memory.

In a sentence

During commissioning, the engineer measured 680 VDC on the Common DC Bus before enabling the inverter sections for three conveyor motors.

Why these words
  • Common Latin communis, shared by all marks the bus as belonging to more than one drive section
  • DC English initialism of direct current identifies the electrical quantity carried by the bus
  • Bus English electrical shortening of busbar, ultimately from Latin omnibus, for all names the central conductor in the phrase
Where it came from
Origin
English technical compound formed from common, the initialism DC, and the electrical sense of bus
Entered the language
20th century
What changed
Common retained its shared sense, DC condensed direct current into an initialism, and bus shifted from omnibus and busbar to a general electrical conductor term.
How it is spelled
Pattern
DC remains uppercase because it is an initialism.
Pattern
Bus is written as a separate word rather than joined to DC.

Spelled like

  • DC link
  • DC drive
  • AC bus
Broken into chunks
  • common
    • common-mode
    • common-collector
  • DC
    • DC link
    • DC reactor
  • bus
    • busbar
    • bus voltage
What it sits beside

Same subject

Same shape

  • common AC bus
  • common power bus

drive power-path terms

shared electrical conductors

  • busbar
  • ground bus
  • power bus

Where it sits in the deck

Phase 16: VFD Related Drive Terms

The drive family's wider vocabulary, from soft starters and servo drives to the regenerative units people also call a drive.

Neighbours in this phase