Assessment of Control Drive Technologies for Induction Motor: Industrial Application to Electric Vehicle

Abstract

Nowadays electric vehicle has increasingly gained much popularity indicated by growing global share market targeted at 30% by 2030 after recording 7.2million global stock in 2019. Compared to Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) counterpart, Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) produce zero tailpipe emission which greatly reducing carbon footprints. Induction motor has been widely used and its control technology has evolved from scalar type volt/hertz to recent predictive control technology. This allows induction motor’s application to expand from being the workhorse of industry to become prime mover in electric vehicle, where high performance is expected. Among vector control scheme, Direct Torque Control (DTC) has gained interest over Field Oriented Control (FOC) with simpler structure, better robustness and dynamics performance yet suffer from high torque and flux ripple. In electric vehicle applications, high ripple at low speed is highly undesirable, potentially causing torsional vibration. High performance control requires speed sensor integration, which often increase complexity in the design. The work aims to review the best control technology for induction motor in electric vehicle application through performance parameter evaluation such as improvement on dynamic response, torque and flux ripple reduction, and component optimization. Several arise issues in motor control and possible methods to circumvent are highlighted in this work. In conclusion, model predictive torque control (MPTC) is the most promising scheme for electric vehicle with excellent dynamic response, good low speed performance, and 50% torque ripple reduction compared to conventional DTC and potential integration with sliding mode observer for sensorless solution.