Electric Drives in Alternative Fuel Vehicles — Some New Definitions and Methodologies

This chapter focuses on some new definitions and methodologies of electric drives that are facing new challenges raised by alternative fuel vehicles. It starts with the objectives, fundamentals, and current research issues of alternative fuel vehicles based electric drives, before moving on to new definitions of unified modeling of the entire electric drive system and design of the proposed DC active power filter aimed at energy storage system chaotic current elimination. Next, novel motor control strategies taking into account alternative fuel vehicle operations are presented for improvement of sensorless drive and flux weakening control performance. Finally, conclusions of this chapter are drawn

Lightweight High-Efficiency Power Train Propulsion with Axial- Flux Machines for Electric or Hybrid Vehicles

The aim of this chapter is to present a new type of powertrain with dimensions and low weight, for vehicles with reduced carbon emissions, which have an axial synchronous machine with one stator and two rotor, with static converter that is simple and inexpensive, a broadcast transmission system using an electric differential, with the control of the two rotors so that they can operate as motor/generator, at the same rotational direction or in opposite directions, at the same speed value, at slightly different speeds or at much different speeds by using an original dual vector control with operating on dual frequency. This is a major concern of hybrid and electric vehicle manufacturers. Expected results: a lighter power train with 20% and an increase in 5% of electric drive efficiency, low inertia rotor at high speed, a compact electric drive system with high torque and simple control, intelligent energy management system with a new vision of technological and innovation development, and equal importance of environment protection. The electrical machines for hybrid (HEV) or electric (EV) drives include a variety of different topologies. According to outcomes of literature survey, induction machines alongside synchronous machines take the major place in HEV or EV power trains

Special Power Electronics Converters and Machine Drives with Wide Band-Gap Devices

Power electronic converters play a key role in power generation, storage, and consumption. The major portion of power losses in the converters is dissipated in the semiconductor switching devices. In recent years, new power semiconductors based on wide band-gap (WBG) devices have been increasingly developed and employed in terms of promising merits including the lower on-state resistance, lower turn-on/off energy, higher capable switching frequency, higher temperature tolerance than conventional Si devices. However, WBG devices also brought new challenges including lower fault tolerance, higher system cost, gate driver challenges, and high dv/dt and resulting increased bearing current in electric machines. This work first proposed a hybrid Si IGBTs + SiC MOSFETs five-level transistor clamped H-bridge (TCHB) inverter which required significantly fewer number of semiconductor switches and fewer isolated DC sources than the conventional cascaded H-bridge inverter. As a result, system cost was largely reduced considering the high price of WBG devices in the present market. The semiconductor switches operated at carrier frequency were configured as Silicon Carbide (SiC) devices to improve the inverter efficiency, while the switches operated at fundamental output frequency (i.e., grid frequency) were constituted by Silicon (Si) IGBT devices. Different modulation strategies and control methods were developed and compared. In other words, this proposed SiC+Si hybrid TCHB inverter provided a solution to ride through a load short-circuit fault. Another special power electronic, multiport converter, was designed for EV charging station integrated with PV power generation and battery energy storage system. The control scheme for different charging modes was carefully developed to improve stabilization including power gap balancing, peak shaving, and valley filling, and voltage sag compensation. As a result, the influence on the power grid was reduced due to the matching between daily charging demand and adequate daytime PV generation. For special machine drives, such as slotless and coreless machines with low inductance, low core losses, typical drive implementations using conventional silicon-based devices are performance limited and also produce large current and torque ripples. In this research, WBG devices were employed to increase inverter switching frequency, reduce current ripple, reduce filter size, and as a result reduce drive system cost. Two inverter drive configurations were proposed and implemented with WBG devices in order to mitigate such issues for 2-phase very low inductance machines. Two inverter topologies, i.e., a dual H-bridge inverter with maximum redundancy and survivability and a 3-leg inverter for reduced cost, were considered. Simulation and experimental results validated the drive configurations in this dissertation. An integrated AC/AC converter was developed for 2-phase motor drives. Additionally, the proposed integrated AC/AC converter was systematically compared with commonly used topologies including AC/DC/AC converter and matrix converters, in terms of the output voltage/current capability, total harmonics distortion (THD), and system cost. Furthermore, closed-loop speed controllers were developed for the three topologies, and the maximum operating range and output phase currents were investigated. The proposed integrated AC/AC converter with a single-phase input and a 2-phase output reduced the switch count to six and resulting in minimized system cost and size for low power applications. In contrast, AC/DC/AC pulse width modulation (PWM) converters contained twelve active power semiconductor switches and a common DC link. Furthermore, a modulation scheme and filters for the proposed converter were developed and modeled in detail. For the significantly increased bearing current caused by the transition from Si devices to WBG devices, advanced modeling and analysis approach was proposed by using coupled field-circuit electromagnetic finite element analysis (FEA) to model bearing voltage and current in electric machines, which took into account the influence of distributed winding conductors and frequency-dependent winding RL parameters. Possible bearing current issues in axial-flux machines, and possibilities of computation time reduction, were also discussed. Two experimental validation approaches were proposed: the time-domain analysis approach to accurately capture the time transient, the stationary testing approach to measure bearing capacitance without complex control development or loading condition limitations. In addition, two types of motors were employed for experimental validation: an inside-out N-type PMSM was used for rotating testing and stationary testing, and an N-type BLDC was used for stationary testing. Possible solutions for the increased CMV and bearing currents caused by the implementation of WGB devices were discussed and developed in simulation validation, including multi-carrier SPWM modulation and H-8 converter topology

Next generation electric drives for HEV/EV propulsion systems: Technology, trends and challenges

In recent decades, several factors such as environmental protection, fossil fuel scarcity, climate change and pollution have driven the research and development of a more clean and sustainable transport. In this context, several agencies and associations, such as the European Union H2020, the United States Council for Automotive Research (USCAR) and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia (UN ESCAP) have defined a set of quantitative and qualitative goals in terms of efficiency, reliability, power losses, power density and economical costs to be met by next generation hybrid and full electric vehicle (HEV/EV) drive systems. As a consequence, the automotive electric drives (which consists of the electric machine, power converter and their cooling systems) of future vehicles have to overcome a number of technological challenges in order to comply with the aforementioned technical objectives. In this context, this paper presents, for each component of the electric drive, a comprehensive review of the state of the art, current technologies, future trends and enabling technologies that will make possible next generation HEV/EVs.This work has been partially supported by the Department of Education, Linguistic Policy and Culture of the Basque Government within the fund for research groups of the Basque university system IT978-16, by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad of Spain within the project DPI2014-53685-C2-2-R and FEDER funds and by the Government of the Basque Country within the research program ELKARTEK as the project KT4TRANS (KK-2015/00047 and KK-2016/00061), as well as by the program to support the specialization of Ph.D researchers at UPV/EHU ESPDOC16/25

Field weakening and sensorless control solutions for synchronous machines applied to electric vehicles.

184 p.La polución es uno de los mayores problemas en los países industrializados. Por ello, la electrificación del transporte por carretera está en pleno auge, favoreciendo la investigación y el desarrollo industrial. El desarrollo de sistemas de propulsión eficientes, fiables, compactos y económicos juega un papel fundamental para la introducción del vehículo eléctrico en el mercado.Las máquinas síncronas de imanes permanentes son, a día de hoy la tecnología más empleada en vehículos eléctricos e híbridos por sus características. Sin embargo, al depender del uso de tierras raras, se están investigando alternativas a este tipo de máquina, tales como las máquinas de reluctancia síncrona asistidas por imanes. Para este tipo de máquinas síncronas es necesario desarrollar estrategias de control eficientes y robustas. Las desviaciones de parámetros son comunes en estas máquinas debido a la saturación magnética y a otra serie de factores, tales como tolerancias de fabricación, dependencias en función de la temperatura de operación o envejecimiento. Las técnicas de control convencionales, especialmente las estrategias de debilitamiento de campo dependen, en general, del conocimiento previo de dichos parámetros. Si no son lo suficientemente robustos, pueden producir problemas de control en las regiones de debilitamiento de campo y debilitamiento de campo profundo. En este sentido, esta tesis presenta dos nuevas estrategias de control de debilitamiento de campo híbridas basadas en LUTs y reguladores VCT.Por otro lado, otro requisito indispensable para la industria de la automoción es la detección de faltas y la tolerancia a fallos. En este sentido, se presenta una nueva estrategia de control sensorless basada en una estructura PLL/HFI híbrida que permite al vehículo continuar operando de forma pseudo-óptima ante roturas en el sensor de posición y velocidad de la máquina eléctrica. En esta tesis, ambas propuestas se validan experimentalmente en un sistema de propulsión real para vehículo eléctrico que cuenta con una máquina de reluctancia síncrona asistidas por imanes de 51 kW

Research and Implement of PMSM Regenerative Braking Control for Electric Vehicle

As the society pays more and more attention to the environment pollution and energy crisis, the electric vehicle (EV) development also entered in a new era. With the development of motor speed control technology and the improvement of motor performance, although the dynamic performance and economical cost of EVs are both better than the internal-combustion engine vehicle (ICEV), the driving range limit and charging station distribution are two major problems which limit the popularization of EVs. In order to extend driving range for EVs, regenerative braking (RB) emerges which is able to recover energy during the braking process to improve the energy efficiency. This thesis aims to investigate the RB based pure electric braking system and its implementation. There are many forms of RB system such as fully electrified braking system and blended braking system (BBS) which is equipped both electric RB system and hydraulic braking (HB) system. In this thesis the main research objective is the RB based fully electrified braking system, however, RB system cannot satisfy all braking situation only by itself. Because the regenerating electromagnetic torque may be too small to meet the braking intention of the driver when the vehicle speed is very low and the regenerating electromagnetic torque may be not enough to stop the vehicle as soon as possible in the case of emergency braking. So, in order to ensure braking safety and braking performance, braking torque should be provided with different forms regarding different braking situation and different braking intention. In this thesis, braking torque is classified into three types. First one is normal reverse current braking when the vehicle speed is too low to have enough RB torque. Second one is RB torque which could recover kinetic energy by regenerating electricity and collecting electric energy into battery packs. The last braking situation is emergency where the braking torque is provided by motor plugging braking based on the optimal slip ratio braking control strategy. Considering two indicators of the RB system which are regenerative efficiency and braking safety, a trade-off point should be found and the corresponding control strategy should be designed. In this thesis, the maximum regenerative efficiency is obtained by a braking torque distribution strategy between front wheel and rear wheel based on a maximum available RB torque estimation method and ECE-R13 regulation. And the emergency braking performance is ensured by a novel fractional-order integral sliding mode control (FOISMC) and numerical simulations show that the control performance is better than the conventional sliding mode controller

Emerging Multiport Electrical Machines and Systems: Past Developments, Current Challenges, and Future Prospects

Distinct from the conventional machines with only one electrical and one mechanical port, electrical machines featuring multiple electrical/mechanical ports (the so-called multiport electrical machines) provide a compact, flexible, and highly efficient manner to convert and/or transfer energies among different ports. This paper attempts to make a comprehensive overview of the existing multiport topologies, from fundamental characteristics to advanced modeling, analysis, and control, with particular emphasis on the extensively investigated brushless doubly fed machines for highly reliable wind turbines and power split devices for hybrid electric vehicles. A qualitative review approach is mainly adopted, but strong efforts are also made to quantitatively highlight the electromagnetic and control performance. Research challenges are identified, and future trends are discussed

Technology development of electric vehicles: A review

To reduce the dependence on oil and environmental pollution, the development of electric vehicles has been accelerated in many countries. The implementation of EVs, especially battery electric vehicles, is considered a solution to the energy crisis and environmental issues. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the technical development of EVs and emerging technologies for their future application. Key technologies regarding batteries, charging technology, electric motors and control, and charging infrastructure of EVs are summarized. This paper also highlights the technical challenges and emerging technologies for the improvement of efficiency, reliability, and safety of EVs in the coming stages as another contribution

Analysis and Design Optimization of a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor for a Campus Patrol Electric Vehicle

© 1967-2012 IEEE. This work presents the analysis, design and optimization of a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) for an electric vehicle (EV) used for campus patrol with a specific drive cycle. Firstly, based on the collected data like the parameters and speed from a test EV on the campus road, the dynamic calculation of the EV is conducted to decide the rated power and speed range of the drive PMSM. Secondly, according to these requirements, an initial design and some basic design parameters are obtained. Thirdly, optimization process is implemented to improve the performance of the designed PMSM. The permanent magnet (PM) structure, airgap length and stator core geometry are optimized respectively in this step. Different optimization processes are proposed to meet multiple optimization objectives simultaneously. Based on the finite element analysis (FEA) method, it is found that the harmonic of the optimized PMSM is lower than that of the initial design, and the torque ripple is reduced by 24%. The effectiveness of optimization on the core loss and PM eddy loss is validated and the temperature rise is suppressed effectively. Finally, a prototype is fabricated for the optimized PMSM and an experimental platform is developed. The test results verify that the optimized PMSM meets the requirements of the specific campus patrol EV well

A review on power electronics technologies for electric mobility

Concerns about greenhouse gas emissions are a key topic addressed by modern societies worldwide. As a contribution to mitigate such effects caused by the transportation sector, the full adoption of electric mobility is increasingly being seen as the main alternative to conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, which is supported by positive industry indicators, despite some identified hurdles. For such objective, power electronics technologies play an essential role and can be contextualized in different purposes to support the full adoption of electric mobility, including on-board and off-board battery charging systems, inductive wireless charging systems, unified traction and charging systems, new topologies with innovative operation modes for supporting the electrical power grid, and innovative solutions for electrified railways. Embracing all of these aspects, this paper presents a review on power electronics technologies for electric mobility where some of the main technologies and power electronics topologies are presented and explained. In order to address a broad scope of technologies, this paper covers road vehicles, lightweight vehicles and railway vehicles, among other electric vehicles.This work has been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia with-in the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2020. This work has been supported by the FCT Project DAIPESEV PTDC/EEI-EEE/30382/2017, and by the FCT Project new ERA4GRIDs PTDC/EEI-EEE/30283/2017. Tiago Sousa is supported by the doctoral scholarship SFRH/BD/134353/2017 granted by FCT