State-of-art on permanent magnet brushless DC motor drives

Permanent magnet brushless DC (PMBLDC) motors are the latest choice of researchers due to their high efficiency, silent operation, compact size, high reliability and low maintenance requirements. These motors are preferred for numerous applications; however, most of them require sensorless control of these motors. The operation of PMBLDC motors requires rotor-position sensing for controlling the winding currents. The sensorless control would need estimation of rotor position from the voltage and current signals, which are easy to be sensed. This paper presents a state of art on PMBLDC motor drives with emphasis on sensorless control of these motors

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

Sensorless position estimation in fault-tolerant permanent magnet AC motor drives with redundancy.

Safety critical applications are heavily dependent on fault-tolerant motor drives being capable of continuing to operate satisfactorily under faults. This research utilizes a fault-tolerant PMAC motor drive with redundancy involving dual drives to provide parallel redundancy where each drive has electrically, magnetically, thermally and physically independent phases to improve its fault-tolerant capabilities. PMAC motor drives can offer high power and torque densities which are essential in high performance applications, for example, more-electric airplanes. In this thesis, two sensorless algorithms are proposed to estimate the rotor position in a fault-tolerant three-phase surface-mounted sinusoidal PMAC motor drive with redundancy under normal and faulted operating conditions. The key aims are to improve the reliability by eliminating the use of a position sensor which is one of major sources of failures, as well as by offering fault-tolerant position estimation. The algorithms utilize measurements of the winding currents and phase voltages, to compute flux linkage increments without integration, hence producing the predicted position values. Estimation errors due measurements are compensated for by a modified phase-locked loop technique which forces the predicted positions to track the flux linkage increments, finally generating the rotor position estimate. The fault-tolerant three-phase sensorless position estimation method utilizes the measured data from the three phase windings in each drive, consequently obtaining a total of two position estimates. However, the fault-tolerant two-phase sensorless position estimation method uses measurements from pairs of phases and produces three position estimates for each drive. Therefore, six position estimates are available in the dual drive system. In normal operation, all of these position estimates can be averaged to achieve a final rotor angle estimate in both schemes. Under faulted operating conditions, on the other hand, a final position estimate should be achieved by averaging position estimates obtained with measurements from healthy phases since unacceptable estimation errors can be created by making use of measured values from phases with failures. In order to validate the effectiveness of the proposed fault-tolerant sensorless position estimation schemes, the algorithms were tested using both simulated data and offline measured data from an experimental fault-tolerant PMAC motor drive system. In the healthy condition, both techniques presented good performance with acceptable accuracies under low and high steady-state speeds, starting from standstill and step load changes. In addition, they had robustness against parameter variations and measurement errors, as well as the ability to recover quickly from large incorrect initial position information. Under faulted operating conditions such as sensor failures, however, the two-phase sensorless method was more reliable than the threephase sensorless method since it could operate even with a faulty phase.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, 201

Control of a brushless permanent magnet machine using an integrated torque sensor in place of a rotor position sensor

The work presented in this thesis proposes the use of measured torque feedback from an integrated, low cost surface acoustic wave (SAW) torque transducer in place of a position sensor to control brushless permanent magnet (BLPM) machines. The BLPM machine closed loop control requires knowledge of the rotor position to control stator current and maximum torque per ampere. The electrical position feedback to control the phase current requires a position sensor or position sensorless technique. Position sensors such as absolute encoder or resolver are needed for position information, in the absolute encoder, an accurately patterned disk rotates between a light source and a detector giving a unique digital output signal for every shaft position. However, each bit in the digital world represents an independent track on the encoder disk, resulting in a complex and costly sensors. Brushless resolvers operation is based on inductive coupling between stator and rotor winding. The resolver with its resolver to digital converter also gives precise absolute position information, but again the cost is often prohibitive. So the disadvantages of the position sensors are the added cost and size to the machine. The position sensorless techniques for the BLPM machine are based on obtaining position from the terminal voltages and currents based on estimating the back electro-magnetic force (EMF), flux-linkage or inductance which from position can be estimated. The disadvantages of the back-EMF and flux-linkage techniques are (1) that they behave poorly at zero and low speed (2) behave poorly for load disturbances since load torque is estimated from machine parameters which can change. The inductance techniques work at zero and low speed, however the disadvantages are (1) in a surface mounted machine there is no saliency so any variation of winding inductances with rotor position arises from magnetic saturation; (2) the back-EMF dominates the rate-of-change in the current; (3) the variation of incremental inductances with rotor position undergoes two cycles per single electrical cycle of the brushless pm machine causing an ambiguity in sensed position; (4) the distortion due to the nonlinearities in the inverter; (5) the load offsets and the noise caused by signal injection. This thesis develops a start-up routine and operation algorithms that enhance the performance of position sensorless control of brushless permanent magnet machines at all speeds, including zero speed, and loads by using a machine integrated, low-cost, SAW torque transducer in place of the rotor position sensor.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServicePublic Authority of Applied Education in KuwaitGBUnited Kingdo

Sensorless drives for permanent magnet synchronous motors

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Axial position estimation of conical shaped motors for aerospace traction applications

This paper is concerned with the use of conical induction machines. Such machines are extremely valuable when apart from the rotational torque output, an axial translation of the rotor is also required. The inherent attraction between the stator and rotor of any machine, combined with the geometry of a conical machine will provide the required axial movement. However, when applied to aerospace applications, where reliability is very important, then full monitoring of the axial position is required. In this paper, an innovative approach aimed at monitoring and controlling the axial translation of a conical induction machine is proposed and investigated. In order to increase the system reliability and also decrease component count, as demanded by the application, the methodology is a sensor-less technique, based on an innovative variant of the high-frequency injection approach. In this paper, the technique has been fully investigated and experimentally validated on a purposely-built, instrumented test-rig

Mathematical Approaches to Modeling, Optimally Designing, and Controlling Electric Machine

Optimal performance of the electric machine/drive system is mandatory to improve the energy consumption and reliability. To achieve this goal, mathematical models of the electric machine/drive system are necessary. Hence, this motivated the editors to instigate the Special Issue “Mathematical Approaches to Modeling, Optimally Designing, and Controlling Electric Machine”, aiming to collect novel publications that push the state-of-the art towards optimal performance for the electric machine/drive system. Seventeen papers have been published in this Special Issue. The published papers focus on several aspects of the electric machine/drive system with respect to the mathematical modelling. Novel optimization methods, control approaches, and comparative analysis for electric drive system based on various electric machines were discussed in the published papers