Disturbance/uncertainty estimation and attenuation techniques in PMSM drives–a survey

This paper gives a comprehensive overview on disturbance/uncertainty estimation and attenuation (DUEA) techniques in permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) drives. Various disturbances and uncertainties in PMSM and also other alternating current (AC) motor drives are first reviewed which shows they have different behaviors and appear in different control loops of the system. The existing DUEA and other relevant control methods in handling disturbances and uncertainties widely used in PMSM drives, and their latest developments are then discussed and summarized. It also provides in-depth analysis of the relationship between these advanced control methods in the context of PMSM systems. When dealing with uncertainties,it is shown that DUEA has a different but complementary mechanism to widely used robust control and adaptive control. The similarities and differences in disturbance attenuation of DUEA and other promising methods such as internal model control and output regulation theory have been analyzed in detail. The wide applications of these methods in different AC motor drives (in particular in PMSM drives) are categorized and summarized. Finally the paper ends with the discussion on future directions in this area

Modeling and Control of a 7-phase Claw-pole Starter-alternator for a Micro-hybrid Automotive Application

This paper deals with the modeling and the control of a new high power 12V Integrated Starter Alternator (ISA). This system is used to bring micro-hybrid functions to standard Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles. The drive is composed of a seven-phase synchronous claw-pole machine with separate excitation, supplied with a seven-leg Voltage Source Inverter (VSI) designed for low voltage and high current. The system is modeled in a generalized Concordia frame and a graphical description is used to highlight energetic properties of such a complex system. A control scheme is then deduced from this graphical description. Two controls are achieved in generator mode and compared: one is using the VSI in a square-wave mode, the other in a Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) mode. Experimental results are provided.This work was supported by the French car supplier Valeoand the regional council of France Region-Nord-Pas-De-Calais

Advanced Modeling of Anisotropic Synchronous Machine Drives for Sensorless Control

Synchronous machines are extensively used for home appliances and industrial applications thanks to their fast dynamic response, good overload capability and high energy density. A precise knowledge of the rotor position is required to control efficiently this kind of motors. In most of the applications resolvers or absolute encoders are installed on the rotor shaft. The employment of position sensors leads to significant drawbacks such as the increased size and cost of the system and a lower reliability of the drive, caused by additional hardware and cabling. In sensorless drives motor position is estimated and employed in the machine control. Thus, no position sensor is required by the drive and all the drawbacks entailed by the sensor are eliminated. Moreover, the position estimation could be useful for redundancy in case of system failures. Therefore, position estimation techniques are object of great interest in the electric drives field. Position estimation techniques can be divided into two main categories: methods that are suitable for medium or high speed and techniques suitable for low speed or standstill operations. In the former group the motor position is estimated through a reconstruction of the permanent magnet flux or back electromotive force (back-EMF). In case of synchronous reluctance machines it is possible to reconstruct the extended active flux or back-EMF. Stator voltages and currents measurements are needed for these reconstruction methods. Since these signals amplitude is proportional to the rotor speed, position estimation can be successfully performed only for medium and high speed machine operations. In the low speed range, sensorless schemes exploit the rotor magnetic anisotropy. Thus, position can be estimated only for anisotropic motors, i.e. synchronous reluctance motors (SynRM), permanent magnet assisted synchronous reluctance motors (PMA-SynRM) and interior permanent magnet synchronous motors (IPMSM). The rotor anisotropy is recognized thanks to an high frequency voltage injection in the stator windings. Several injection techniques have been proposed, differing from the signal typology. In particular, high frequency sinusoidal or square-wave carriers are often applied. The position information is usually extracted from the current response through a heterodyning demodulation that entails the use of low pass filters in the position estimator, limiting its dynamic. The aim of the research was proposing a new algorithm to estimate the rotor position from the HF current response, getting rid of the demodulation and its weaknesses. Thus, the ellipse fitting technique has been proposed. Robustness against signal processing delay effects and a reduced number of required filters are the main advantages of this novel approach. The inverse problem related to the ellipse fitting is solved implementing a recursive least squares algorithm. The proposed ellipse fitting technique is not affected by signal processing delay effects, and it requires the tuning of only one parameter, called forgetting factor, making the studied method suitable for industrial application thanks to its minimal setup effort. Besides the ellipse fitting technique for rotor position estimation, two other topics have been studied: - Computation of self-sensing capabilities of synchronous machines. - Online incremental inductances identification for SynRM.Synchronous machines are extensively used for home appliances and industrial applications thanks to their fast dynamic response, good overload capability and high energy density. A precise knowledge of the rotor position is required to control efficiently this kind of motors. In most of the applications resolvers or absolute encoders are installed on the rotor shaft. The employment of position sensors leads to significant drawbacks such as the increased size and cost of the system and a lower reliability of the drive, caused by additional hardware and cabling. In sensorless drives motor position is estimated and employed in the machine control. Thus, no position sensor is required by the drive and all the drawbacks entailed by the sensor are eliminated. Moreover, the position estimation could be useful for redundancy in case of system failures. Therefore, position estimation techniques are object of great interest in the electric drives field. Position estimation techniques can be divided into two main categories: methods that are suitable for medium or high speed and techniques suitable for low speed or standstill operations. In the former group the motor position is estimated through a reconstruction of the permanent magnet flux or back electromotive force (back-EMF). In case of synchronous reluctance machines it is possible to reconstruct the extended active flux or back-EMF. Stator voltages and currents measurements are needed for these reconstruction methods. Since these signals amplitude is proportional to the rotor speed, position estimation can be successfully performed only for medium and high speed machine operations. In the low speed range, sensorless schemes exploit the rotor magnetic anisotropy. Thus, position can be estimated only for anisotropic motors, i.e. synchronous reluctance motors (SynRM), permanent magnet assisted synchronous reluctance motors (PMA-SynRM) and interior permanent magnet synchronous motors (IPMSM). The rotor anisotropy is recognized thanks to an high frequency voltage injection in the stator windings. Several injection techniques have been proposed, differing from the signal typology. In particular, high frequency sinusoidal or square-wave carriers are often applied. The position information is usually extracted from the current response through a heterodyning demodulation that entails the use of low pass filters in the position estimator, limiting its dynamic. The aim of the research was proposing a new algorithm to estimate the rotor position from the HF current response, getting rid of the demodulation and its weaknesses. Thus, the ellipse fitting technique has been proposed. Robustness against signal processing delay effects and a reduced number of required filters are the main advantages of this novel approach. The inverse problem related to the ellipse fitting is solved implementing a recursive least squares algorithm. The proposed ellipse fitting technique is not affected by signal processing delay effects, and it requires the tuning of only one parameter, called forgetting factor, making the studied method suitable for industrial application thanks to its minimal setup effort. Besides the ellipse fitting technique for rotor position estimation, two other topics have been studied: - Computation of self-sensing capabilities of synchronous machines. - Online incremental inductances identification for SynRM

Sensorless Control of Switched-Flux Permanent Magnet Machines

This thesis investigates the sensorless control strategies of permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSMs), with particular reference to switched-flux permanent magnet (SFPM) machines, based on high-frequency signal injection methods for low speed and standstill and the back-EMF based methods for medium and high speeds

Estimation of Saturation of Permanent-Magnet Synchronous Motors Through an Energy-Based Model

We propose a parametric model of the saturated Permanent-Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) together with an estimation method of the magnetic parameters. The model is based on an energy function which simply encompasses the saturation effects. Injection of fast-varying pulsating voltages and measurements of the resulting current ripples then permit to identify the magnetic parameters by linear least squares. Experimental results on a surface-mounted PMSM and an interoir magnet PMSM illustrate the relevance of the approach.Comment: IEMDC-2011 (preliminary version

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

High-frequency issues using rotating voltage injections intended for position self-sensing

The rotor position is required in many control schemes in electrical drives. Replacing position sensors by machine self-sensing estimators increases reliability and reduces cost. Solutions based on tracking magnetic anisotropies through the monitoring of the incremental inductance variations are efficient at low-speed and standstill operations. This inductance can be estimated by measuring the response to the injection of high-frequency signals. In general however, the selection of the optimal frequency is not addressed thoroughly. In this paper, we propose discrete-time operations based on a rotating voltage injection at frequencies up to one third of the sampling frequency used by the digital controller. The impact on the rotation-drive, the computational requirement, the robustness and the effect of the resistance on the position estimation are analyzed regarding the signal frequency

Current and voltage shaping method via modified d–q transformation for the torque ripple compensation in PMSMs

This study deals with a novel control strategy for permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSMs) to incorporate disturbance compensation features in the existing current controller maintaining at the same time the integrity of the reference tracking performances. The torque produced by a PMSM arises from the interaction of stator currents and rotor magnetic flux, therefore an intrinsic disturbance is propagated to the output, in case the flux is not perfectly sinusoidal. In particular, the authors focus is to propose the effective correction of undesired harmonic effects generated on the torque from the non-ideal machine rotor. With the knowledge of the back electromagnetic force waveform, it is possible to determine the current waveforms necessary to produce a smooth torque in normal operation and through model-base considerations, the required voltage harmonic waveforms are also computed. The method is also extended to the flux weakening operation of the machine. The analytical solutions found are used in place of the classical αβ/dq transformations, without modifying the field-oriented control performance of the main controller. The effectiveness of the proposed control scheme is verified by means of test-bench measurement

Torque pulsations minimization in PM synchronous motor drive

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