Low Cost Brushless DC Research Articles

BLDC Motor based Air Dessert Cooler

Abstract: This paper proposes a new position sensorless drive for brushless DC (BLDC) motors.Growing need for high productivity is placing new demands on mechanisms connected with electrical motors. The demand for low costBrushless DC (BLDC) motor has increased in industrial applications. A simple BLDC motor control algorithm forlow cost motor drive applications using general purpose microcontrollers has been created and presented in this paper. Proposed design will allow the user to rotate the motor either clockwise or counter clockwise direction. Dependingon the rotor position the sensor will give response to the controller circuit. Then the controller circuit will fix the direction of current following to the stator. The design controller circuit is also implemented. The overall design consists of microcontroller circuit, logic gates, switching devices (MOSFET/BJT), BLDC motor, sensors.

Optimized Sliding Mode Control of Three-Phase Four-Switch Inverter BLDC Motor Drive Using LFD Algorithm

This paper presents a low-cost Brushless DC (BLDC) motor drive system with fewer switches. BLDC motors are widely utilized in variable speed drives and industrial applications due to their high efficiency, high power factor, high torque, low maintenance, and ease of control. The proposed control strategy for robust speed control is dependent on two feedback signals which are speed sensor loop which is regulated by Sliding Mode Controller (SMC) and current sensor loop which is regulated by Proportional-Integral (PI) for boosting the drive system adaptability. In this work, the BLDC motor is driven by a four-switch three-phase inverter emulating a three-phase six switch inverter, to reduce switching losses with a low complex control strategy. In order to reach a robust performance of the proposed control strategy, the Lévy Flight Distribution (LFD) technique is used to tune the gains of PI and SMC parameters. The Integral Time Absolute Error (ITAE) is used as a fitness function. The simulation results show the SMC with LFD technique has superiority over conventional SMC and optimization PI controller in terms of fast-tracking to the desired value, reduction speed error to the zero value, and low overshoot under sudden change conditions.

A comparative study of universal fuzzy logic and PI speed controllers for four switch BLDC motor drive

This paper presents a comparison of PI controller and fuzzy controller for speed control of a low cost brushless DC (BLDC) motor drive used in variable speed drive applications. The cost reduction in BLDC drive system is achieved by the reduction of power semiconductor switches. A PI controller and universal fuzzy controller are designed for the speed control and tested by simulation for various conditions. The simulation is performed by using MATLAB Simulink toolbox and the results show the effective response of the fuzzy controller. The rise time and steady state error of fuzzy controller is improved on an average of about 26% and 55% respectively compared to the conventional PI controller.

A comparative study of universal fuzzy logic and PI speed controllers for four switch BLDC motor drive

This paper presents a comparison of PI controller and fuzzy controller for speed control of a low cost brushless DC (BLDC) motor drive used in variable speed drive applications. The cost reduction in BLDC drive system is achieved by the reduction of power semiconductor switches. A PI controller and universal fuzzy controller are designed for the speed control and tested by simulation for various conditions. The simulation is performed by using MATLAB Simulink toolbox and the results show the effective response of the fuzzy controller. The rise time and steady state error of fuzzy controller is improved on an average of about 26% and 55% respectively compared to the conventional PI controller.

Sources of torque ripple and their influence in BLDC motor drives

Abstract In automotive applications brushed DC motor is often used because of its simplicity and low price. It is very quiet motor, easy to control and serves as actuators with an overall short operating time. Brushless DC (BLDC) motors have less wear and probability of failure, higher efficiency, but need a more complex control algorithm than a DC motor drive. So brushless DC motor is most suitable for applications demanding long-term continuous duty like fuel pumps. Brushed DC motor is often used also in seat ventilation and in some HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) compressors and blowers where low noise operation is required. There is an effort to replace this brushed DC motor with low-cost BLDC motor. But problem of these low-cost BLDC motors is in produced torque ripple, vibrations and acoustic noise. Therefore, sources of torque ripple and their suppression has to be identified. This article will be focused on identification of main sources of torque ripple caused by construction and control of BLDC motor. Sources such as cogging torque, waveform of Back-EMF in combination with waveform of phase currents (type of control technique), dead-time and commutation of currents will be investigated. Impact of these sources will be identified on real BLDC motor and also torque ripple, vibrations and acoustic noise will be evaluated in this article.

Position Control of a Rail Guided Mover Using a Low-Cost BLDC Motor

This paper presents the design and control of a rail guided mover system using a brushless dc (BLDC) motor as traction. In the designed system, the roller on the rail surface is driven by the BLDC motor, and the high-definition camera moves up and down driven by a dc motor. In order to keep the reference position in the low-speed region around the stop position, a modified microstepping method using torque angle is proposed. The proposed microstepping method uses the variable current magnitude according to the estimated torque angle in order to reduce the torque ripple. Then, the actual rotor follows the rotating current vector with the proper torque angle band. Moreover, a smooth deceleration is achieved by a variable gain of the position controller, which is obtained by the deceleration time and position error. Furthermore, the slip effect between the roller and the rail surface is simply compensated by the measured slip coefficient in both forward and backward directions. The proposed position control method is verified by the experiments of the practical rail moving security system.

A Torque Ripple Compensation Technique for a Low-Cost Brushless DC Motor Drive

This paper presents a torque ripple compensation technique for a brushless dc (BLDC) motor drive that is operated without a DC link capacitor. The motor drive, which uses a single-switch control strategy, resembles that of a buck converter during operation at any switching state. A simple buck-converter-based model is therefore proposed to predict the behavior of the BLDC motor drive at constant speed. Using the model, the impact of operation without the DC link capacitor on the torque produced by the BLDC motor drive is investigated in detail. Theoretical behavior of the BLDC motor drive is compared with MATLAB/Simulink-based simulations to demonstrate the validity of the compensation technique and the analysis. Experimental results of a 250 W prototype motor drive are also presented to further validate the theoretical analysis, as well as the effectiveness of the proposed technique. Results convincingly indicate that the BLDC motor drive with torque ripple compensation offers comparable performance.

Brushless DC Motor Driver Interfacing with the eZdsp-F2812 Fuzzy Controller

Readily available low cost brushless DC (BLDC) motor’s integrated drivers-electronic commutation (EC)-encourage engineers to use eZdsp in mechatronic systems by saving them the trouble of developing the motor hardware drivers (inverter with power circuits, optoisolaters, detecting circuits). Commercial motor drivers (EC) improve the hardware reliability of developed system and saves the programmer from writing six pulse-width modulation control sequences code for BLDC motor. Beside saving memory space the processing speed can also be optimised for the application program. In the work presented here a commercial integrated driver is interfaced with eZdsp-F2812 and a fuzzy controller is implemented to control the speed and direction of BLDC motor. Standard available eZdsp libraries “C281xC/C++ Header Files” were modified to accomplish the task described in this work. Necessary hardware and software interfacing techniques between eZdsp-F2812 and motor driver are presented. eZdsp programs and register settings required for clock, timer, counters and interrupt routines are described in detail for motor control and speed measurement. The purpose of this work is to describe the interface process between motor driver (EC) and eZdsp-F2812, define the process limitations and configuration and setup of peripherals registers.

Position Sensorless Control for Four-Switch Three-Phase Brushless DC Motor Drives

This paper proposes a position sensorless control scheme for four-switch three-phase (FSTP) brushless DC (BLDC) motor drives using a field programmable gate array (FPGA). A novel sensorless control with six commutation modes and novel pulsewidth modulation scheme is developed to drive FSTP BLDC motors. The low cost BLDC driver is achieved by the reduction of switch device count, cost down of control, and saving of hall sensors. The feasibility of the proposed sensorless control for FSTP BLDC motor drives is demonstrated by analysis and experimental results.

Simplified simulation methods for polyphase brushless DC motors

This paper presents a simulation method for brushless DC motors. The purpose of this method is to provide a solution to the initial design process, where the simulation speed is important due to the numerous variables that have to be considered. The method requires a reduced number of parameters in order to simplify it and to facilitate the design process. It is applicable to polyphase motors regardless of its connection or phase number. The simulation method can simulate the phase current control system or a DC bus current feedback system. The later control system is widely used in low-cost brushless DC motors. The simulation method is based upon the average value modelling of the inverter leg, at the PWM scale, in different modulation conditions, modelling almost all the inverter structures with transistors as active elements. The experimental results from a seven-phase brushless DC motor with one uncontrolled phase validate the modelling method. The comparison of the average torque, the current, voltage and torque waveforms in several operating conditions shows that the simulation method can predict the comportment of a brushless DC motor without an excessive computational burden, so it can be readily used as a design tool for this kind of motor.