Speed sensorless nonlinear adaptive control of induction motor using combined speed and perturbation observer

Abstract

High performance induction motors (IM) require a robust and reliable speed controller to maintain the speed tracking performance under various uncertainties and disturbances. This paper presents a sensorless speed controller for IM based on speed and perturbation estimation and compensation. By defining a lumped perturbation term to include all unmodeled nonlinear dynamics and external disturbances, two state and perturbation observers are designed with combining the model reference adaptive system (MRAS) based speed observer to estimate the flux and speed states and the flux- and speed-loop related lumped perturbation terms. The estimated flux, speed and perturbation terms are used to design an output feedback, speed sensorless nonlinear adaptive controller (SSNAC) for IM. The stability of the closed-loop system is addressed in Lyapunov theory. Effectiveness of the SSNAC is verified via simulation and experiment tests. Comparing with the standard vector control plus MRAS speed observer (VC-MRAS), the proposed SSNAC reduces the speed tracking error by 20% to 30% on average under model uncertainties and unknown load disturbance due to the estimation and compensation of perturbation terms. The combined observer can estimate the real rotor speed under speed varying and load changes and thus makes SSNAC achieve high performance robust speed drive without using speed sensors.