Control of the Brushless DC Motor in Combine Mode
A brushless DC (BLDC) motor is considered to be a high performance gear motor due to its low maintenance cost, versatility, adequate torque and speed, and high reliability. Normally, a simple BLDC motor driver is composed of a permanent magnetic rotor and three stator coils. In each controlling step, two out of three coils are used to generate rotating magnetic field, while the floating coil induces a back electromotive force (emf) and feeds the generated current back to the controller as noise. In this work, combine mode scheme is proposed to control a BLDC motor in such a way that the excess current is accumulated via additional switching circuit for further utilization. Therefore, a BLDC motor can drive the load in concurrent with generating power. The proposed switching circuit has been designed and simulated on PSpice. The results show that up to 75% of input voltage can be charged to the storage capacitor.
This paper provides a technical review of position and speed sensorless methods for controlling Brushless Direct Current (BLDC) motor drives, including the background analysis using sensors, limitations and advances. The performance and reliability of BLDC motor drivers have been improved because the conventional control and sensing techniques have been improved through sensorless technology. Then, in this paper sensorless advances are reviewed and recent developments in this area are introduced with their inherent advantages and drawbacks, including the analysis of practical implementation issues and applications. The study includes a deep overview of state-of-the-art back-EMF sensing methods, which includes Terminal Voltage Sensing, Third Harmonic Voltage Integration, Terminal Current Sensing, Back-EMF Integration and PWM strategies. Also, the most relevant techniques based on estimation and models are briefly analysed, such as Sliding-mode Observer, Extended Kalman Filter, Model Reference Adaptive System, Adaptive observers (Full-order and Pseudoreduced-order) and Artificial Neural Networks.
For the past two decades several Asian countries such as Japan, which have been under pressure from high energy prices, have implemented variable speed PM motor drives for energy saving applications such as air conditioners and refrigerators [1]. On the other hand, the U.S.A. has kept on using cheap induction motor drives, which have around 10% lower efficiency than adjustable PM motor drives for energy saving applications. Therefore recently, the increase in energy prices spurs higher demands of variable speed PM motor drives. Also, recent rapid proliferation of motor drives into the automobile industry, based on hybrid drives, generates a serious demand for high efficient PM motor drives, and this was the beginning of interest in BLDC motors.
BLDC motors, also called Permanent Magnet DC Synchronous motors, are one of the motor types that have more rapidly gained popularity, mainly because of their better characteristics and performance [2]. These motors are used in a great amount of industrial sectors because their architecture is suitable for any safety critical applications.
The brushless DC motor is a synchronous electric motor that, from a modelling perspective, looks exactly like a DC motor, having a linear relationship between current and torque, voltage and rpm. It is an electronically controlled commutation system, instead of having a mechanical commutation, which is typical of brushed motors. Additionally, the electromagnets do not move, the permanent magnets rotate and the armature remains static. This gets around the problem of how to transfer current to a moving armature. In order to do this, the brush-system/commutator assembly is replaced by an intelligent electronic controller, which performs the same power distribution as a brushed DC motor [3]. BLDC motors have many advantages over brushed DC motors and induction motors, such as a better speed versus torque characteristics, high dynamic response, high efficiency and reliability, long operating life (no brush erosion), noiseless operation, higher speed ranges, and reduction of electromagnetic interference (EMI). In addition, the ratio of delivered torque to the size of the motor is higher, making it useful in applications where space and weight are critical factors, especially in aerospace applications.