A Modified Indirect Current Vector-Controlled CHB Three-Level Inverter-fed Induction Motor Drive for Electric Vehicle

Abstract

Low-cost electric vehicles (EVs) prefer induction motor (IM) based drive systems which are mostly operated with 2-level inverters (2LIs) because they require fewer component counts and minimum control complexity. While an IM operated with 2LI has a higher total harmonic distortion (THD) and lower efficiency. An indirect current vector control (ICVC) scheme is an effective and simplest control scheme used for IM of EVs. This ICVC scheme required one speed sensor and three current sensors which increased its cost and control complexity. Therefore, in this paper, a cascaded H-bridge 3-level inverter (CHB-3LI) fed IM drive (IMD) is presented. A modified ICVC scheme having only one speed sensor is presented and used to control the CHB-3LI fed IMD. The steady-state and transient performances of CHB-3LI fed IMD with the modified ICVC scheme are analyzed through simulation in MATLAB Simulink and validated through experiments on a developed laboratory setup.