A prototype controller for variable reluctance motors

A three-level cascade structure is proposed for the control of a variable reluctance (VR) motor. In order to deal with the highly nonlinear behavior of VR motors, the controlling system includes two variable-structure controllers for current and velocity loops as well as an intermediate torque-sharing compensator. The intermediate compensator has been designed by means of nonlinear optimization techniques in order to reduce the torque ripple and to get the maximum motor velocity. The proposed controller has been validated through extensive simulation experiments. The architecture of a prototype controller is presented and the actual performance measured on a VR motor is discussed in comparison with simulations. The results show practical feasibility and good performance of the proposed controller, which is also suitable for a very simple and quite inexpensive fully hardware implementatio

Model predictive MRAS estimator for sensorless induction motor drives

Ph. D. ThesisThe project presents a novel model predictive reference adaptive system (MRAS) speed observer for sensorless induction motor drives applications. The proposed observer is based on the finite control set-model predictive control principle. The rotor position is calculated using a search-based optimization algorithm which ensures a minimum speed tuning error signal at each sampling period. This eliminates the need for a proportional integral (PI) controller which is conventionally employed in the adaption mechanism of MRAS observers. Extensive simulation and experimental tests have been carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed observer. Both the simulation and the experimental results show improved performance of the MRAS scheme in both open and closed-loop sensorless modes of operation at low speeds and with different loading conditions including regeneration. The proposed scheme also improves the system robustness against motor parameter variations and increases the maximum bandwidth of the speed loop controller. However, some of the experimental results show oscillations in the estimated rotor speed, especially at light loading conditions. Furthermore, due to the use of the voltage equation in the reference model, the scheme remains sensitive, to a certain extent, to the variations in the machine parameters. Therefore, to reduce rotor speed oscillations at light loading conditions, an adaptive filter is employed in the speed extraction mechanism, where an adaptation mechanism is proposed to adapt the filter time constant depending on the dynamic state of the system. Furthermore, a voltage compensating method is employed in the reference model of the MP-MRAS observer to address the problems associated with sensitivity to motor parameter variation. The performance of the proposed scheme is evaluated both experimentally and by simulation. Results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed scheme for sensorless speed control of IM drives

High performance disturbance observer based control system design for permanent magnet synchronous AC machine applications

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonAn electrical machine is one of the main workforces in different industries and serves them in various applications. Machine drive control design involves many technical issues for efficient and robust exploitation. Over several decades, Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) is getting preferred for industrial applications over its counterpart Squirrel Cage Induction Motor (SCIM) drive, because of their higher efficiency, power density, and higher torque to inertia ratio. In the prospective that PMSM drives are considered the drives of the future, there are still technical challenges and issues related to PMSM control. Many studies have been devoted to PMSM control in the past, but there are still some open research areas that bring worldwide researchers’ interests back to PMSM drive control. One of the approaches that may facilitate better performance, higher efficiency, and robust and reliable work of the control system is the disturbance observer-based control (DOBC) with linear and nonlinear output feedback control for PM synchronous machine applications. DOBC is adopted due to its ability to reject external and internal disturbances with improving tracking performance in the variable speed wind energy conversion system (WECS) to maximize power extraction. The high order disturbance observer (HODO) is utilized to estimate the aerodynamic torque-based wind speed without the use of a traditional anemometer, which reduces the overall cost and improves the reliability of the whole system. Also, this method has been designed to improve the angular shaft speed tracking of the PMSM system under load torque disturbance and speed variations. The model-based linear and nonlinear feedback control are used in the proposed control systems. The sliding mode control (SMC) with switching output feedback control law and integral SMC with linear feedback and state-dependent Riccati equation (SDRE) based approaches have been designed for the systems. The SDRE control accounts for the nonlinear multivariable structure of the WECS and is approximated with Taylor series expansion terms. The chattering inherited from SMC is eliminated by the continuous approximation technique. The sliding mode is guaranteed by eliminating the reaching mode in the proposed integral SMC. The model-free cascaded linear feedback control system based on the proportional-integral (PI) controllers use a back-calculation algorithm anti-windup scheme. The proposed speed controllers are synthesized with HODO to compensate for the external disturbance, model uncertainty, noise, and modelling errors. Moreover, servomechanism-based SDRE control, a near-optimal control system is designed to suppress the model uncertainty and noise without the use of disturbance observers. The proposed control systems for PMSM speed regulation have demonstrated a significant improvement in the angular shaft speed-tracking performance at the transients. Their performances have been tested under speed, load torque variations, and model uncertainty. For example, HODO-based SMC with switching output feedback control law (SOFCL) has demonstrated improvement by more than 78% than the PI-PI control system of the PMSM. The performance of the HODOs-based Integral SMC with SDRE nonlinear feedback is improved by 80.5% under external disturbance, model uncertainty, and noise than Integral SMC with linear feedback in the WECS. The HODO-based SDRE control with servomechanism has shown an 80.2% improvement of mean absolute percentage error under disturbances than Integral SMC with linear feedback in the WECS. The PMSM speed tracking performance of the proposed HODO-based discrete-time PI-PI control system with back-calculation algorithm anti-windup scheme is improved by 87.29% and 90.2% in the speed commands and load torque disturbance variations scenarios respectively. The simulations for testing the proposed control system of the PMSM system and WECS have been implemented in Matlab/Simulink environment. The PMSM speed control experimental results have been obtained with Lucas-Nuelle DSP-based rapid control prototyping kit.Center for International Program “Bolashak” of the Ministry of Education and Science Republic of Kazakhsta

Design and Implementation of Takagi-Sugeno Fuzzy Tracking Control for a DC-DC Buck Converter

This paper presents the design and implementation of a Takagi-Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy controller for a DC-DC buck converter using Arduino board. The proposed fuzzy controller is able to pilot the states of the buck converter to track a reference model. The T-S fuzzy model is employed, firstly, to represent exactly the dynamics of the nonlinear buck converter system, and then the considered controller is designed on the basis of a concept called Virtual Desired Variables (VDVs). In this case, a two-stage design procedure is developed: i) determine the reference model according to the desired output voltage, ii) determine the fuzzy controller gains by solving a set of Linear Matrix Inequalities (LMIs). A digital implementation of the proposed T-S fuzzy controller is carried out using the ATmega328P-based Microcontroller of the Arduino Uno board. Simulations and experimental results demonstrate the validity and effectiveness of the proposed control scheme

New Hybrid Sensorless Speed of a Non-Salient Pole PMSG Coupled to Wind turbine Using a Modified Switching Algorithm

©2019 ISA. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. his manuscript is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). For further details please see: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/The paper focuses on the design of position and speed observers for the rotor of a non-salient pole permanent magnet synchronous generator (NSPPMSG) coupled to a wind turbine. With the random nature of wind speed this observer is required to provide a position and speed estimates over a wide speed range. The proposed hybrid structure combines two observers and a switching algorithm to select the appropriate observer based on a modified weighting coefficients method. The first observer is a higher-order sliding mode observer (HOSMO) based on modified super twisting algorithm (STA) with correction term and operates in the medium and nominal wind speed ranges. The second observer is used in the low speed range and is based on the rotor flux estimation and the control by injecting a direct reference current different to zero. The stability of each observer has been successfully assessed using an appropriate Lyapunov function. The simulation results obtained show the effectiveness and performance of the proposed observer and control scheme.Peer reviewe

Recent Advances in Robust Control

Robust control has been a topic of active research in the last three decades culminating in H_2/H_\infty and \mu design methods followed by research on parametric robustness, initially motivated by Kharitonov's theorem, the extension to non-linear time delay systems, and other more recent methods. The two volumes of Recent Advances in Robust Control give a selective overview of recent theoretical developments and present selected application examples. The volumes comprise 39 contributions covering various theoretical aspects as well as different application areas. The first volume covers selected problems in the theory of robust control and its application to robotic and electromechanical systems. The second volume is dedicated to special topics in robust control and problem specific solutions. Recent Advances in Robust Control will be a valuable reference for those interested in the recent theoretical advances and for researchers working in the broad field of robotics and mechatronics

Measurements, Models, Systems and Design

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Advances in Rotating Electric Machines

It is difficult to imagine a modern society without rotating electric machines. Their use has been increasing not only in the traditional fields of application but also in more contemporary fields, including renewable energy conversion systems, electric aircraft, aerospace, electric vehicles, unmanned propulsion systems, robotics, etc. This has contributed to advances in the materials, design methodologies, modeling tools, and manufacturing processes of current electric machines, which are characterized by high compactness, low weight, high power density, high torque density, and high reliability. On the other hand, the growing use of electric machines and drives in more critical applications has pushed forward the research in the area of condition monitoring and fault tolerance, leading to the development of more reliable diagnostic techniques and more fault-tolerant machines. This book presents and disseminates the most recent advances related to the theory, design, modeling, application, control, and condition monitoring of all types of rotating electric machines

Nonlinear constrained and saturated control of power electronics and electromechanical systems

Power electronic converters are extensively adopted for the solution of timely issues, such as power quality improvement in industrial plants, energy management in hybrid electrical systems, and control of electrical generators for renewables. Beside nonlinearity, this systems are typically characterized by hard constraints on the control inputs, and sometimes the state variables. In this respect, control laws able to handle input saturation are crucial to formally characterize the systems stability and performance properties. From a practical viewpoint, a proper saturation management allows to extend the systems transient and steady-state operating ranges, improving their reliability and availability. The main topic of this thesis concern saturated control methodologies, based on modern approaches, applied to power electronics and electromechanical systems. The pursued objective is to provide formal results under any saturation scenario, overcoming the drawbacks of the classic solution commonly applied to cope with saturation of power converters, and enhancing performance. For this purpose two main approaches are exploited and extended to deal with power electronic applications: modern anti-windup strategies, providing formal results and systematic design rules for the anti-windup compensator, devoted to handle control saturation, and “one step” saturated feedback design techniques, relying on a suitable characterization of the saturation nonlinearity and less conservative extensions of standard absolute stability theory results. The first part of the thesis is devoted to present and develop a novel general anti-windup scheme, which is then specifically applied to a class of power converters adopted for power quality enhancement in industrial plants. In the second part a polytopic differential inclusion representation of saturation nonlinearity is presented and extended to deal with a class of multiple input power converters, used to manage hybrid electrical energy sources. The third part regards adaptive observers design for robust estimation of the parameters required for high performance control of power systems