Sensored and sensorless speed control methods for brushless doubly fed reluctance motors

The study considers aspects of scalar V/f control, vector control and direct torque (and flux) control (DTC) of the brushless doubly fed reluctance machine (BDFRM) as a promising cost-effective alternative to the existing technological solutions for applications with restricted variable speed capability such as large pumps and wind turbine generators. Apart from providing a comprehensive literature review and analysis of these control methods, the development and results of experimental verification, of an angular velocity observerbased DTC scheme for sensorless speed control of the BDFRM which, unlike most of the other DTC-concept applications, can perform well down to zero supply frequency of the inverter-fed winding, have also been presented in the study

A Robust Bearing Fault Detection and Diagnosis Technique for Brushless DC Motors Under Non-stationary Operating Conditions

Rolling element bearing defects are among the main reasons for the breakdown of electrical machines, and therefore, early diagnosis of these is necessary to avoid more catastrophic failure consequences. This paper presents a novel approach for identifying rolling element bearing defects in brushless DC motors under non-stationary operating conditions. Stator current and lateral vibration measurements are selected as fault indicators to extract meaningful features, using a discrete wavelet transform. These features are further reduced via the application of orthogonal fuzzy neighbourhood discriminative analysis. A recurrent neural network is then used to detect and classify the presence of bearing faults. The proposed system is implemented and tested in simulation on data collected from an experimental setup, to verify its effectiveness and reliability in accurately detecting and classifying the various faults

Induction Machine Diagnosis using Stator Current Advanced Signal Processing

International audienceInduction machines are widely used in industrial applications. Safety, reliability, efficiency and performance are major concerns that direct the research activities in the field of electrical machines. Even though the induction machines are very reliable, many failures can occur such as bearing faults, air-gap eccentricity and broken rotor bars. Therefore, the challenge is to detect them at an early stage in order to prevent breakdowns. In particular, stator current-based condition monitoring is an extensively investigated field for cost and maintenance savings. In fact, several signal processing techniques for stator current-based induction machine faults detection have been studied. These techniques can be classified into: spectral analysis approaches, demodulation techniques and time-frequency representations. In addition, for diagnostic purposes, more sophisticated techniques are required in order to determine the faulty components. This paper intends to review the spectral analysis techniques and time-frequency representations. These techniques are demonstrated on experimental data issued from a test bed equipped with a 0.75 kW induction machine. Nomenclature O&M = Operation and Maintenance; WTG = Wind Turbine Generator; MMF = Magneto-Motive Force; MCSA = Motor Current signal Analysis; PSD = Power Spectral Density; FFT = Fast Fourier Transform; DFT = Discrete Fourier Transform; MUSIC = MUltiple SIgnal Characterization; ESPRIT = Estimation of Signal Parameters via Rotational Invariance Techniques; SNR = Signal to Noise Ratio; MLE = Maximum Likelihood Estimation; STFT = Short-Time Fourier Transform; CWT = Continuous Wavelet Transform; WVD = Wigner-Ville distribution; HHT = Hilbert-Huang Transform; DWT = Discrete Wavelet Transform; EMD = Empirical Mode Decomposition; IMF = Intrinsic Mode Function; AM = Amplitude Modulation; FM = Frequency Modulation; IA = Instantaneous Amplitude; IF = Instantaneous Frequency; í µí± ! = Supply frequency; í µí± ! = Rotational frequency; í µí± ! = Fault frequency introduced by the modified rotor MMF; í µí± ! = Characteristic vibration frequencies; í µí± !"# = Bearing defects characteristic frequency; í µí± !" = Bearing outer raceway defect characteristic frequency; í µí± !" = Bearing inner raceway defect characteristic frequency; í µí± !" = Bearing balls defect characteristic frequency; í µí± !"" = Eccentricity characteristic frequency; í µí± ! = Number of rotor bars or rotor slots; í µí± = Slip; í µí°¹ ! = Sampling frequency; í µí± = Number of samples; í µí±¤[. ] = Time-window (Hanning, Hamming, etc.); í µí¼ = Time-delay; í µí¼ ! = Variance; ℎ[. ] = Time-window

Failure Detection by signal similarity measurement of Brushless DC motors

During the last years the Brushless DC (BLDC) motors are gaining popularity as a solution for providing mechanical power, starting from low cost mobility solutions like the electric bikes, to high performance and high reliability aeronautical Electro- Mechanical Actuators (EMAs). In this framework, the availability of fault detection tools suited for these types of machines appears necessary. There is already a vast literature on this topic, but only a small percentage of the proposed techniques are developed to a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) sufficiently high to be implementable in industrial applications. The investigation on the state of the art carried out during the first phase of the present work, tries to collect the articles which are closer to a possible implementation. This choice has been influenced by the author experience when dealing with fault detection papers, which often are oriented towards a more academic public and do not concentrate on the implementation. The methodology used in this work to compile the state of the art has been the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) and it is still not diffused in the engineering world. For this reason a dedicated description has been inserted in the respective chapter of the thesis. From this study, some characteristics needed for the fault detection on electric machine have been listed and a new technique for demagnetisation detection on BLDC motors has been proposed. In the second part of the thesis, it is presented an algorithm to detect demagnetisation based on the dissimilarity between the voltages of the various electric turns of the motor due to this failure. The exposed method presents the advantages of not needing domain transforms or previous knowledge of the motor (made exception for the number of pole-pairs). Furthermore the proposed indicators are fast to be computed and require only the acquisition of motor phases voltages for a mechanical turn. The hypotheses made about the effect of a demagnetisation with Finite Element Method (FEM) have also been confirmed through simulations analysis and the proposed method to detect demagnetisation has been validated with experimental tests on a real motor. 2 Applications and Limitations The presented indicators have been studied, simulated and experimented only on an outrunner, low power BLDC motor. Anyway it is not excluded that, with some adaptation, they could be used on any BLDC motor or also on different types of motors; indeed this is an argument for a future work. Another important consideration is that, in order to detect demagnetisation, the motor should have a number of pole pairs greater than 2. This because the algorithm compares the electric turns between them and it is obviously necessary to have more than one. Another characteristic is that it can only detect partial demagnetisation. The demagnetisation of all the magnets to the same level, although very improbable, would not cause those differences in the voltage signals needed for fault detection. Various tests have been executed both at fixed and variable speed. In the first case it was possible to define a threshold to discern between the healthy and the demagnetised motor, while in the second case, even if the indicators are still separated, it was not possible to define a fixed threshold. Hence, if no classification algorithms are used (Support Vector Machine (SVM), Neural Network (NN), Artificial Intelligence (AI), etc.), the indicator shall be computed when the motor is running in steady state conditions. 3 Advantages The method of fault detection by using the proposed indicators has the main advantage of being straightforwardly applicable with no need of extra hardware. Another important characteristic to be highlighted is that the only previous needed knowledge of the motor is the number of pole-pairs. Also the intermediate data are easy to understand as they represent physical variables of the motor in the time domain. Thanks to this, also no domain transformations for frequency analysis are needed, saving computation time. The algorithm to compute the indicators is composed by few steps, it is fast to execute and does not need complex programming or libraries. Indeed the execution time for the PC implementation is already very low and an optimised implementation in a lower level programming language could easily fit in a microcontroller and be executed at even higher speed, permitting both real time monitoring and punctual testing during maintenance. Furthermore it uses only few and easily obtainable data, which makes it suitable for every industrial implementation and interesting for further academic researches. Having a maximum theoretical value for the indicator is also an important advantage, because it permits to evaluate a motor without previous knowledge of the same; indeed a healthy motor should have an ixc value always very close to this maximum value. It is worth to notice that the proposed indicators have been validated with experimental tests in various conditions, showing both good performances and space for further improvements. Finally, although it is true that constant speed is required for a correct analysis, it is needed for just a mechanical turn, i.e. for few milliseconds. For example if the motor is running at 3000 RPM, a complete turn is executed in 20 ms

Methods of resistance estimation in permanent magnet synchronous motors for real-time thermal management

Real-time thermal management of electrical ma- chines relies on sufficiently accurate indicators of internal tem- perature. One indicator of temperature in a permanent-magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) is the stator winding resistance. Detection of PMSM winding resistance in the literature has been made on machines with relatively high resistances, where the resistive voltage vector is significant under load. This paper describes two techniques which can be applied to detect the winding resistance, through ‘Fixed Angle’ and ‘Fixed Mag- nitude’ current injection. Two further methods are described which discriminate injected current and voltages from motoring currents and voltages: ‘Unipolar’ and ‘Bipolar’ separation. These enable the resistance to be determined, and hence the winding temperature in permanent-magnet machines. These methods can be applied under load, and in a manner that does not disturb motor torque or speed. The method distinguishes between changes in the electro-motive force (EMF) constant and the resistive voltage. This paper introduces the techniques, whilst a companion paper covers the application of one of the methods to a PMSM drive system

High Technology Readiness Level Techniques for Brushless Direct Current Motors Failures Detection: A Systematic Review

Many papers related to this topic can be found in the bibliography; however, just a modest percentage of the introduced techniques are developed to a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) sufficiently high to be implementable in industrial applications. This paper is focused precisely on the review of this specific topic. The investigation on the state of the art has been carried out as a systematic review, a very rigorous and reliable standardised scientific methodology, and tries to collect the articles which are closer to a possible implementation. This selection has been carefully done with the definition of a series of rules, drawn to represent the adequate level of readiness of fault detection techniques which the various articles propose.Unión Europea (7PM / 2007-2013) / ERC n. 78533

A Comparative Study of Time-Frequency Representations for Fault Detection in Wind Turbine

To reduce the cost of wind energy, minimization and prediction of maintenance operations in wind turbine is of key importance. In variable speed turbine generator, advanced signal processing tools are required to detect and diagnose the generator faults from the stator current. To detect a fault in non-stationary conditions, previous studies have investigated the use of time-frequency techniques such as the Spectrogram, the Wavelet transform, the Wigner-Ville representation and the Hilbert-Huang transform. In this paper, these techniques are presented and compared for broken-rotor bar detection in squirrel-cage generators. The comparison is based on several criteria such as the computational complexity, the readability of the representation and the easiness of interpretatio

Sensorless Rotor Position Estimation For Brushless DC Motors

Brushless DC motor speed is controlled by synchronizing the stator coil current with rotor position in order to acquire an accurate alignment of stator rotating field with rotor permanent-magnet field for efficient transfer of energy. In order to accomplish this goal, a motor shaft is instantly tracked by using rotating rotor position sensors such as Hall effect sensors, optical encoders or resolvers etc. Adding sensors to detect rotor position affects the overall reliability and mechanical robustness of the system. Therefore, a whole new trend of replacing position sensors with sensorless rotor position estimation techniques have a promising demand. Among the sensorless approaches, Back-EMF measurement and high frequency signal injection is the most common. Back-EMF is an electromotive force, directly proportional to the speed of rotor revolutions per second, the greater the speed motor acquires the greater the Back-EMF amplitude appears against the motion of rotation. However, the detected Back-EMF is zero at start-up and does not provide motor speed information at this instant. There-fore, Back-EMF based techniques are highly unfavourable for low speed application specially near zero. On the other hand, signal injection techniques are comparatively developed for low or near zero motor speed applications and they also can estimate the on-line motor parameters exploiting the identification theory on phase voltages and currents signals. The signal injection approach requires expensive additional hardware to inject high frequency signal. Since, motors are typically driven with pulse width modulation techniques, high frequency signals are naturally already present which can be used to detect position. This thesis presents rotor position estimation by measuring the voltage and current signals and also proposes an equivalent permanent-magnet synchronous motor model by fitting thedata to a position dependent circuit model