Nik Rumzi Nik Idris

Direct torque control of induction machines with constant switching frequency and reduced torque ripple

Direct torque control (DTC) of induction machines is known to have a simple control structure with comparable performance to that of the field-oriented control technique. Two major problems that are usually associated with DTC drives are: switching frequency that varies with operating conditions and high torque ripple. To solve these problems, and at the same time retain the simple control structure of DTC, a constant switching frequency torque controller is proposed to replace the conventional hysteresis-based controller. In this paper, the modeling, averaging, and linearization of the torque loop containing the proposed controller followed by simulation and experimental results are presented. The proposed controller is shown to be capable of reducing the torque ripple and maintaining a constant switching frequency.

An improved stator flux estimation in steady state operation for direct torque control of induction machines

The paper presents an improved stator flux estimation technique based on a voltage model with some form of low pass filtering. In voltage model-based stator flux estimation, a low-pass (LP) filter is normally used instead of a pure integrator to avoid the integration drift problem due to DC offset, noise or measurement error present in the back electromotive force (EMF). In steady state condition, the LP filter estimator will degrade the performance and efficiency of the direct torque control (DTC) drive system since it introduces magnitude and phase errors, thus resulting in an incorrect voltage vector selection. The stator flux steady state error between the LP filter and a pure integrator estimator techniques is derived and its effect on the steady state DTC drive performance is analyzed. A simple method is proposed to compensate for this error which results in a significant improvement in the steady state drive performances. Simulation based on this technique is given and it is verified by experimental results.

A New Torque and Flux Controller for Direct Torque Control of Induction Machines

This paper presents the implementation of a high-performance direct torque control (DTC) of induction machines drive. DTC has two major problems, namely, high torque ripple and variable switching frequency. In order to solve these problems, this paper proposed a pair of torque and flux controllers to replace the hysteresis-based controllers. The design of these controllers is fully discussed and a set of numerical values of the parameters for the proposed controllers is given. The simulation of the proposed controllers applied to the DTC drive is presented. The simulation results are then verified by experimental results. The hardware implementation is mainly constructed by using DSP TMS320C31 and Altera field-programmable gate array devices. The results prove that a significant torque and stator flux ripples reduction is achieved. Likewise, the switching frequency is fixed at 10.4 kHz and a more sinusoidal phase current is obtained

An Improved FPGA Implementation of Direct Torque Control for Induction Machines

This paper presents a novel direct torque control (DTC) approach for induction machines, based on an improved torque and stator flux estimator and its implementation using field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA). The DTC performance is significantly improved by the use of FPGA, which can execute the DTC algorithm at higher sampling frequency. This leads to the reduction of the torque ripple and improved flux and torque estimations. The main achievements are: 1) calculating a discrete integration operation of stator flux using backward Euler approach; 2) modifying a so called nonrestoring method in calculating the complicated square root operation in stator flux estimator; 3) introducing a new flux sector determination method; 4) increasing the sampling frequency to 200 kHz such that the digital computation will perform similar to that of the analog operation; and 5) using twos complement fixed-point format approach to minimize calculation errors and the hardware resource usage in all operations. The design was achieved in VHDL, based on a Matlab/Simulink simulation model. The Hardware-in-the-Loop method is used to verify the functionality of the FPGA estimator. The simulation results are validated experimentally. Thus, it is demonstrated that FPGA implementation of DTC drives can achieve excellent performance at high sampling frequency.

An Optimized Switching Strategy for Quick Dynamic Torque Control in DTC-Hysteresis-Based Induction Machines

A dynamic overmodulation strategy for fast dynamic torque control in direct torque control (DTC)-hysteresis-based induction machine is proposed. The fastest dynamic torque response with a six-step mode can be achieved in the proposed method by switching only the most optimized voltage vector that produces the largest tangential component to the circular flux locus. This paper also discusses the performance of dynamic torque control in basic DTC in order to justify on how the proposed selected voltage vector results in excellent dynamic torque performance. The main benefit of the proposed method is its simplicity, since it only requires a minor modification to the conventional DTC-hysteresis-based structure and does not require a space vector modulator. To verify the feasibility of the proposed dynamic overmodulation strategy, simulation and experimentation, as well as comparison with the conventional DTC scheme, are carried out. Results showed a significant improvement in the dynamic torque response when compared to the conventional DTC-hysteresis-based method.

A Wide-Speed High Torque Capability Utilizing Overmodulation Strategy in DTC of Induction Machines With Constant Switching Frequency Controller

This paper presents a simple overmodulation method employed in direct torque control (DTC) constant switching frequency (CSF) controller of induction machines. The proposed overmodulation method is utilized to extend a constant torque region and hence produce high torque capability in field-weakening region with six-step operation. It will be shown that the overmodulation operation using the DTC-CSF scheme can be established by controlling the stator flux locus from circular to the hexagonal shape. This is achieved by modifying the flux error status produced from the flux hysteresis controller before it is fed to the lookup table. The main benefit of the proposed method is its simplicity since it requires only a minor modification to the conventional DTC hysteresis-based structure and does not require a space-vector modulator.

Simple Flux Regulation for Improving State Estimation at Very Low and Zero Speed of a Speed Sensorless Direct Torque Control of an Induction Motor

This paper presents a simple flux regulation for a direct torque control (DTC) of an induction motor (IM) to improve speed and torque estimations at low- and zero-speed regions. To accomplish this, a constant switching frequency controller (CSFC) is used to replace the three-level hysteresis torque comparator of a DTC IM. The DTC of IM utilizing CSFC (DTC-CSFC) retains the simple structure of a lookup table-based DTC drive. With DTC-CSFC, constant switching frequency is maintained, and at the same, the flux droop problem that normally occurs in DTC with the hysteresis controller (DTC-HC) at low speed is solved; subsequently, the stator flux and torque estimations at low speed are also improved. In the proposed system, the speed feedback for the closed-loop speed control is estimated using an extended Kalman filter, which requires heavy real-time computation. However, due to the simple structure of DTC-CSFC, small sampling time, hence large control bandwidth is possible. The performances of the speed sensorless DTC-HC and DTC-CSFC are compared experimentally under different operating conditions. With the improved stator flux regulation, experimental results of the DTC-CSFC showed a significant improvement in speed and torque estimations at very low and zero-frequency operations.

Extending switching frequency for torque ripple reduction utilizing a constant frequency torque controller in dtc of induction motors

Direct torque control (DTC) of induction machines is known to offer fast instantaneous torque and flux control with a simple control structure. However, this scheme has two major disadvantageous, namely, a variable inverter switching frequency and a high torque ripple. These problems occur due to the use of hysteresis comparators in conventional DTC schemes, particularly in controlling the output torque. This paper reviews the utilization of constant frequency torque controllers (CFTC) in DTC to solve these problems while retaining the simple control structure of DTC. Some extensions of the work in utilizing a CFTC will be carried out in this paper which can further reduce the torque ripple. This is particularly useful for a system which has a limited/low sampling frequency. The feasibility of a CFTC with an extended carrier frequency in minimizing the torque ripple is verified through experimental results.

A parallel energy-sharing control for fuel cell-battery-ultracapacitor hybrid vehicle

This paper proposes a parallel energy-sharing control for fuel cell hybrid vehicles (FCHVs) application. The hybrid source consists of fuel cells (FCs) stack, battery packs and Ultracapacitor (UC) modules. In the proposed parallel energy sharing control, each source is connected to a DC bus via power electronics converters. A total of six control loops are applied in the supervisory system in order to regulate the DC bus voltage, control of power flow and at the same time to monitor the state of charge (SOC) of each energy storage device. Simulation with experiment verifications are carried out to verify the proposed energy control system.

A new method for modeling and vector control of unbalanced induction motors

In general, rotating electrical machines can be modeled by an equivalent two phase machine. This means that an unbalanced 3-phase induction motor can be modeled by using an unbalanced two phase induction motor model. This paper shows this concept by modeling a faulty 3-phase induction motor in which one of its feeding phases is opened. The paper also presents a new fault-tolerant vector control (which is modified from the conventional vector control) that can be used to control a faulty three-phase induction motor. Simulation results show the good performance of the proposed method.