Hysteresis band current controller based field-oriented control for an induction motor driven by a direct matrix converter

© 2017 IEEE. This paper presents work on the hysteresis band control for output current regulation in a direct matrix converter in order to drive an induction motor. The hysteresis band controller offers excellent dynamic performance. It has been extensively researched for the voltage source inverter and inverter based drive systems, but it has not been investigated within the context of a matrix converter or a matrix converter based motor drive. Firstly, this paper proposes a fixed-band hysteresis current controller for a matrix converter to track the prescribed current references, and then a sinusoidal-band hysteresis current controller is proposed. Both methods have fast dynamic performance and they inherently integrate the line modulation technique of the virtual rectifier stage into the overall modulation. The extra modulation stage is not required and the surge current is inherently prevented. The sinusoidal-band hysteresis controller demonstrates that it generates lower harmonic content at the expense of the higher average switching frequency. Following this, both methods are tested as a drive for an induction motor with field-oriented control. With the matrix-converter-based drive system, one significant benefit is that the braking chopper is removed due to the bidirectional feature. The methods are simple and have light computation burden. The obtained results demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed scheme. The experimental work is being carried out to support the proposed scheme

Field-oriented control based on hysteresis band current controller for a permanent magnet synchronous motor driven by a direct matrix converter

© 2018, The Institution of Engineering and Technology. The hysteresis band controller offers excellent dynamic performance. It has been widely researched and applied to the voltage source inverter and inverter fed drives, however it has not been investigated within the context of a matrix converter or a matrix converter based motor drive. In this study, both fixed-band and sinusoidal-band hysteresis current controllers are proposed and developed for a direct matrix converter. A comprehensive comparative evaluation of the two methods is then carried out. Both methods have fast dynamic performance and they inherently integrate the line modulation technique of the virtual rectifier stage into the overall modulation. Surge currents are prevented with the proposed scheme. The sinusoidal-band hysteresis controller demonstrates lower total harmonic distortion at the expense of higher average switching frequency, which is only significantly observable at very high sampling frequencies. The proposed controller is integrated with the field-oriented control to drive a matrix converter fed permanent magnet synchronous machine. The proposed methods are simple and incur a light computational burden, which advances the practical applications of matrix converters in AC motor drives. The simulation and experiment results demonstrate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed scheme

Torque Control

This book is the result of inspirations and contributions from many researchers, a collection of 9 works, which are, in majority, focalised around the Direct Torque Control and may be comprised of three sections: different techniques for the control of asynchronous motors and double feed or double star induction machines, oriented approach of recent developments relating to the control of the Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors, and special controller design and torque control of switched reluctance machine

Sequential model predictive control of direct matrix converter without weighting factors

© 2018 IEEE. The direct matrix converter (MC) is a promising converter that performs direct AC-to-AC conversion. Model predictive control (MPC) is a simple and powerful control strategy for power electronic converters including the MC. However, weighting factor design and heavy computational burden impose significant challenges for this control strategy. This paper investigates the sequential MPC (SMPC) for a three-phase direct MC. In this control strategy, each control objective has an individual cost function and these cost functions are evaluated sequentially based on priority. The complex weighting factor design process is not required and the computational burden can be reduced. In addition, specifying the priority for control objectives can be achieved. A comparative simulation study with standard MPC is carried out in Matlab/Simulink. Control performance is compared to the standard MPC and found to be comparable. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed strategy

Induction Motors

AC motors play a major role in modern industrial applications. Squirrel-cage induction motors (SCIMs) are probably the most frequently used when compared to other AC motors because of their low cost, ruggedness, and low maintenance. The material presented in this book is organized into four sections, covering the applications and structural properties of induction motors (IMs), fault detection and diagnostics, control strategies, and the more recently developed topology based on the multiphase (more than three phases) induction motors. This material should be of specific interest to engineers and researchers who are engaged in the modeling, design, and implementation of control algorithms applied to induction motors and, more generally, to readers broadly interested in nonlinear control, health condition monitoring, and fault diagnosis

Simulation-based coyote optimization algorithm to determine gains of PI controller for enhancing the performance of solar PV water-pumping system

In this study, a simulation-based coyote optimization algorithm (COA) to identify the gains of PI to ameliorate the water-pumping system performance fed from the photovoltaic system is presented. The aim is to develop a stand-alone water-pumping system powered by solar energy, i.e., without the need of electric power from the utility grid. The voltage of the DC bus was adopted as a good candidate to guarantee the extraction of the maximum power under partial shading conditions. In such a system, two proportional-integral (PI) controllers, at least, are necessary. The adjustment of (Proportional-Integral) controllers are always carried out by classical and tiresome trials and errors techniques which becomes a hard task and time-consuming. In order to overcome this problem, an optimization problem was reformulated and modeled under functional time-domain constraints, aiming at tuning these decision variables. For achieving the desired operational characteristics of the PV water-pumping system for both rotor speed and DC-link voltage, simultaneously, the proposed COA algorithm is adopted. It is carried out through resolving a multiobjective optimization problem employing the weighted-sum technique. Inspired on theCanis latransspecies, the COA algorithm is successfully investigated to resolve such a problem by taking into account some constraints in terms of time-domain performance as well as producing the maximum power from the photovoltaic generation system. To assess the efficiency of the suggested COA method, the classical Ziegler-Nichols and trial-error tuning methods for the DC-link voltage and rotor speed dynamics, were compared. The main outcomes ensured the effectiveness and superiority of the COA algorithm. Compared to the other reported techniques, it is superior in terms of convergence rapidity and solution qualities

On-line Condition Monitoring, Fault Detection and Diagnosis in Electrical Machines and Power Electronic Converters

The objective of this PhD research is to develop robust, and non-intrusive condition monitoring methods for induction motors fed by closed-loop inverters. The flexible energy forms synthesized by these connected power electronic converters greatly enhance the performance and expand the operating region of induction motors. They also significantly alter the fault behavior of these electric machines and complicate the fault detection and protection. The current state of the art in condition monitoring of power-converter-fed electric machines is underdeveloped as compared to the maturing condition monitoring techniques for grid-connected electric machines. This dissertation first investigates the stator turn-to-turn fault modelling for induction motors (IM) fed by a grid directly. A novel and more meaningful model of the motor itself was developed and a comprehensive study of the closed-loop inverter drives was conducted. A direct torque control (DTC) method was selected for controlling IM’s electromagnetic torque and stator flux-linkage amplitude in industrial applications. Additionally, a new driver based on DTC rules, predictive control theory and fuzzy logic inference system for the IM was developed. This novel controller improves the performance of the torque control on the IM as it reduces most of the disadvantages of the classical and predictive DTC drivers. An analytical investigation of the impacts of the stator inter-turn short-circuit of the machine in the controller and its reaction was performed. This research sets a based knowledge and clear foundations of the events happening inside the IM and internally in the DTC when the machine is damaged by a turn fault in the stator. This dissertation also develops a technique for the health monitoring of the induction machine under stator turn failure. The developed technique was based on the monitoring of the off-diagonal term of the sequence component impedance matrix. Its advantages are that it is independent of the IM parameters, it is immune to the sensors’ errors, it requires a small learning stage, compared with NN, and it is not intrusive, robust and online. The research developed in this dissertation represents a significant advance that can be utilized in fault detection and condition monitoring in industrial applications, transportation electrification as well as the utilization of renewable energy microgrids. To conclude, this PhD research focuses on the development of condition monitoring techniques, modelling, and insightful analyses of a specific type of electric machine system. The fundamental ideas behind the proposed condition monitoring technique, model and analysis are quite universal and appeals to a much wider variety of electric machines connected to power electronic converters or drivers. To sum up, this PhD research has a broad beneficial impact on a wide spectrum of power-converter-fed electric machines and is thus of practical importance

Control strategies and applications of three-phase direct matrix converters

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.AC-to-AC converters have been widely used in various areas in the real world. In industrial applications, the AC-to-AC power conversion is usually accomplished by indirect converters. In these traditional converters, AC power is firstly converted into DC power by a rectifier, and then the DC power is converted into AC power by an inverter. The rectifier and inverter are usually connected via an intermediate bulky DC-link capacitor. The use of the DC-link capacitor in these converters makes the equipment volume bulky, reduces the lifetime, increases the design complexity and decreases the system efficiency. Therefore, it is of great benefit to remove the bulky DC-link capacitor or propose new converter topologies. A matrix converter (MC) does not require large energy storage elements and it has emerged as a potential solution to AC-to-AC conversion. A three-phase direct MC comprises nine bidirectional semiconductor switches arranged in a 3×3 matrix form to realize the direct AC-to-AC conversion. Thanks to benefits such as bidirectional power flow, compact volume, controllable input power factor and sinusoidal waveform, MCs have attracted research interests and plenty of projects on MC have been reported. MC is also regarded as an all-silicon converter. However, there are some drawbacks associated with MCs and they have very limited industrial applications. These drawbacks include low voltage transfer ratio (VTR), sensitivity to the grid variations and complex modulation. Some MC application areas need more exploration. The work in this thesis is carried out to contribute to possible solutions to some of the above issues by investigating some control strategies and applications of MCs. The main contributions included in this work are summarized as follows: (1) A simple decoupling controller is designed for the MC-based unified power flow controller (UPFC) (MC-UPFC) to regulate the power flow in a transmission system. The controllable regions of the MC-UPFC are also analyzed. A design procedure for the closed-loop controller in the MC-UPFC is presented. (2) A modified PI controller is proposed for the improvement of the steady-state performance by including a current feedforward path. More control flexibility is provided because of the feedforward controller. A PR controller is designed for the MC and this has good performance. (3) A hysteresis current controller is proposed for the MC to drive AC motors. Both fixed-band and sinusoidal-band hysteresis controllers are investigated, and their performance is compared. The hysteresis controller is a very simple and practical controller for the MC. For the MC-based motor drive, a direct torque control (DTC) technique is also investigated. (4) Model predictive control (MPC) is investigated to control the MC. This scheme is used in an MC-based microgrid. In the islanded mode, predictive voltage control is employed to regulate the MC output voltages to supply various loads. An improved VTR is observed. When the microgrid is connected to the utility grid, power flow is the main objective. The performance of the controller is tested under various conditions including input disturbance and different loads. (5) An MC prototype is built to support the research. The prototype hardware includes main circuit, drives, supplies, analog to digital conversion (ADC) conditioning circuits, and sensor board. The algorithm is implemented in Matlab Simulink with C2000 hardware support packages for TI DSP processors. Various experimental tests are carried out to support the proposed strategies

Source Grid Interface of Wind Energy Systems

Wind power is one of the most developed and rapidly growing renewable energy sources. Through extensive literature review this thesis synthesizes the existing knowledge of wind energy systems to offer useful information to developers of such systems. Any prototyping should be preceded by theoretical analysis and computer simulations, foundations for which are provided here. The thesis is devoted to an in-depth analysis of wind energy generators, system configurations, power converters, control schemes and dynamic and steady state performance of practical wind energy conversion systems (WECS). Attention is mainly focused on interfacing squirrel cage Induction generators (SCIG) and doubly-fed induction generators (DFIG) with the power network to capture optimal power, provide controllable active and reactive power and minimize network harmonics using the two-level converter, as a power electronic converter. Control of active and reactive power, frequency and voltage are indispensable for stability of the grid. This thesis focuses on two main control techniques, field oriented control (FOC) and direct torque control (DTC) for the SCIG. The dynamic model of induction generator is non-linear and hence for all types of control, the flux and the torque have to be decoupled for maintaining linearity between input and output for achieving high dynamic performance. FOC is used for decoupled control for rotor flux and electromagnetic torque . The stator current is decomposed into flux and torque producing components and they both are controlled independently. FOC uses three feedback control loops generate gating signals for the converter. DTC also achieves high dynamic performance by decoupling of rotor flux and electromagnetic torque without the intermediate current loops. DTC asks for the estimation of stator flux and torque and like FOC has 2 branches which have flux and torque comparators. The errors between the set and the estimated value are used to drive the inverters. The two methods are valid for both steady and transient state. Their validity is confirmed by simulating the systems on MATLAB/Simulink platform and comparing them the results obtained by hand calculations. Further DFIG’s are introduced. The dynamic model is developed using the machines equivalent circuit and is expressed in the stationary, rotor and the synchronous reference frames for evaluating the performance of the machine. The stator of the DFIG is directly interfaced to the grid and by controlling the rotor voltage by a two level back-to-back converter the grid synchronization and power control is maintained. The DTC and the direct power control (DPC) methods are used to control the rotor side (RSC) and the grid side converter (GSC). The RSC generates the 3-ph voltages of variable frequency in order to control the generator torque and the reactive power exchanged between the stator and the grid. The GSC exchanges active power with the grid injected by the RSC with a constant frequency. The steady and transient behavior of the machine is investigated through simulations