Computationally Efficient Overmodulation Methods for Synchronous Motor Drive Systems

Abstract

This article presents two computationally efficient methods for selecting the optimal modulated voltage that can achieve superior dynamic performance for surface-mounted permanent magnet synchronous motors (SPMSMs). Specifically, when an SPMSM suffers a large reference or sudden load change, the controller might command a voltage reference, which is beyond the range of voltages that a modulator can synthesize. In such cases, the transient behavior of the motor can deteriorate when the demanded voltage is not properly limited to the voltage boundary. To address this issue, a simple overmodulation method based on common-mode-saturation injection (CMSI) is proposed. This strategy comes with very low computational cost and can easily find the voltage vector on the boundary, which is nearest to the reference voltage vector. Moreover, an alternative control method, referred to as quadratic program (QP) based deadbeat (DB) control, is proposed that also ensures optimal system performance during overmodualtion. According to this strategy, the control problem is formulated as a constrained QP, which is solved with an efficient solver based on an active-set method. Finally, extensive simulative and experimental investigations for an SPMSM are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed overmodulation methods.