Distributed Control Strategies for Modular Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machines Taking Into Account Mutual Inductances

Abstract

To meet the need for flexibility and reliability in present-day motor drive applications, each phase in a permanent magnet synchronous machine is considered as a separate module in this paper, with its own dedicated controller. To utilize the full potential of these modular drives, decentralized and distributed control is applied. One of the main challenges of these control strategies is that the local current controllers only have local information at their disposal, which leads to reduced performance in comparison with a centralized control strategy. The mutual inductances in permanent magnet synchronous machines cause a coupling between the different phases, but a decentralized or distributed control strategy does not have a complete overview of all the phase voltages and currents. Therefore, it is studied in this paper how much the mutual inductances affect the performance of decentralized and distributed deadbeat control strategies in the abc-reference frame. Furthermore, a new distributed control strategy is proposed. By making intelligent use of communication between the phases, and the sinusoidal waveform of the phase currents and voltages, this distributed control strategy reaches a similar level of performance as a centralized control strategy.