An Improved Central 60° Synchronous Modulation for High Transient Performance with PMSM Stator Flux Control Used in Urban Rail Transit Systems

Abstract

Central 60° synchronous modulation is an easy pulse-width modulation (PWM) method to implement for the traction inverters of urban rail trains at a very low switching frequency. Unfortunately, its switching patterns are determined by a Fourier analysis of assumed steady-state voltages. As a result, its transient responses are not very good with over-currents and high instantaneous torque pulses. In the proposed solution, the switching patterns of the conventional central 60° modulation are modified according to the dynamic error between the target and actual stator flux. Then, the specific trajectory of the stator flux and current vector can be guaranteed, which leads to better system transients. In addition, stator flux control is introduced to get smooth mode switching between the central 60° modulation and the other PWMs in this paper. A detailed flow chart of the control signal transmission is given. The target flux is obtained by an integral of the target voltage. The actual PMSM flux is estimated by a minimum order flux state observer based on the extended flux model. Based on a two-level inverter model, improved rules in the α-β stationary coordinate system and equations of the switching patterns amendment are proposed. The proposed method is verified by simulation and experimental results.