Significant Current Harmonics Research Articles

Torque and flux control of induction motors fed by synchronized and symmetrical voltage pulses

SummaryThe low switching frequency in high‐power motor drives is mandatory for reducing thermal stress on power devices but often results in significant current harmonics. Synchronized space vector modulation (SynSVM), a widely used low‐carrier‐ratio PWM strategy, offers a simple implementation and reduced harmonics. However, implementing SynSVM in traditional AC motor current regulation poses challenges due to fixed voltage samples. To address this, a high‐performance control scheme based on SynSVM is proposed in this manuscript. It ensures the stator flux vector follows a predefined trajectory by integrating voltage pulses from the original SynSVM. The basic voltage vector switching is facilitated through high‐frequency monitoring and compensation of torque and flux errors, resulting in a fast torque response. Furthermore, synchronized and symmetrical voltage pulses, inherent in the original SynSVM, are equivalently generated, to effectively mitigate current harmonics. This proposed method liberates designers from the complexities of current regulation based on SynSVM. Both simulations and experiments validate the efficacy of the proposed method.

Electromagnetic Forces in Induction Motor With Nonsinusoidal Power Supply.

Magnetic flux density and electromagnetic forces of induction motors at sinusoidal and nonsinusoidal power supply are analyzed. On the basis of asymptotic small parameter expansions depending on the level of higher time harmonics in the supply current waveform the most essential components of radial and tangential forces are singled out. With the given current waveform preliminary estimations of the relation of electromagnetic forces and torques of geometrically similar motors are obtained. It is shown that even insignificant distortions in the supply current waveform may bear negative effect on increase in vibrations due to some additional torques and forces. These forces are conditioned by interaction of the main field and linear load waves from the current first and higher time harmonics. In relative units they are comparable with forces of interaction of the field tooth harmonics. Increase in the current harmonics leads to proportional increase in electromagnetic forces. At significant current harmonics some additional rise of the total level and enrichment of the spectrum of forces due to interaction of the field higher time harmonics between themselves takes place. The computation results are compared with the experimental data for an induction motor power supplied from a pulse-width frequency converter.

Extended state observer-based predictive control for soft open point

This paper proposes an extended state observer-based ultra-local model-free three-vector predictive control method for Soft Open Point (SOP). First, the Ultra-Local Model-Free Predictive Control (ULMFPC) method is proposed to improve the robustness of the system, which only uses the input and output of the outer-loop, and any other parameters are not involved. Second, considering parameter perturbations and external disturbances in the SOP system, an expansion state observer (ESO) is established to observe the SOP system’s total perturbations and the perturbations are compensated in real-time to improve the system. Third, to solve the problem of significant current harmonics in traditional model predictive control (MPC), a three-vector MPC method (TV-MPC) is adopted to reduce the total harmonic distortion rate (THD) of the current. Finally, it is verified by simulation that the proposed method can effectively reduce the current harmonics of the SOP system, rate value setting time, and improve the dynamic performance effectively. When perturbations occur in the system, the proposed method can improve the anti-interference and robustness of the system.

Compensation of Selective Current Harmonics for Switching-Table-Based Direct Torque Control of Dual Three-Phase PMSM Drives

Current harmonics are ubiquitous in dual three phase (DTP) permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM) drives. Due to back electromotive force (EMF) distortion, significant current harmonics are generated in the DTP-PMSM system. The influence of back EMF harmonics is investigated in this paper and a novel switching-table-based direct torque control method to compensate the selected current harmonics caused by the back EMF harmonics is proposed. It shows that by employing different optimal action time durations for voltage vectors in the z <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sub> z <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> subspace and setting the synthetic voltage vectors to non-zero, the stator flux harmonics caused by the back EMF harmonics can be selectively compensated, as verified by experiments.

Electric Vehicle Battery Performance Investigation Based on Real World Current Harmonics

Electric vehicle (EV) powertrains consist of power electronic components as well as electric machines to manage the energy flow between different powertrain subsystems and to deliver the necessary torque and power requirements at the wheels. These power subsystems can generate undesired electrical harmonics on the direct current (DC) bus of the powertrain. This may lead to the on-board battery being subjected to DC current superposed with undesirable high- and low- frequency current oscillations, known as ripples. From real-world measurements, significant current harmonics perturbations within the range of 50 Hz to 4 kHz have been observed on the high voltage DC bus of the EV. In the limited literature, investigations into the impact of these harmonics on the degradation of battery systems have been conducted. In these studies, the battery systems were supplied by superposed current signals i.e., DC superposed by a single frequency alternating current (AC). None of these studies considered applying the entire spectrum of the ripple current measured in the real-world scenario, which is focused on in this research. The preliminary results indicate that there is no difference concerning capacity fade or impedance rise between the cells subjected to just DC current and those subjected additionally to a superposed AC ripple current.

Direct Torque Control Scheme for a Six-Phase Induction Motor With Reduced Torque Ripple

This paper presents an improved direct torque control (DTC) method for an asymmetrical six-phase induction motor using a two-level six-phase inverter. As is well known, a simple extension of three-phase DTC technique to an asymmetrical six-phase motor, using large vectors only, introduces significant current harmonics of the order 6 n ±1 ( n = 1, 3, 5,…), which are mapped into the nonflux/torque producing ( xy ) plane. These harmonics cause only losses in the motor winding as they do not take part in torque production. Hence, a number of different improved DTC techniques have been developed in the past for multiphase motor drives. The paper takes one such DTC method as the starting point and improves it further by using the concept of virtual voltage vectors. Developed vector selection algorithm, based on two virtual voltage vectors, requires the information on position of the flux in the auxiliary ( xy ) subspace and provides stator current quality commensurate with the currently available best DTC algorithm for six-phase drives. However, use of two virtual voltage vectors enables a substantial reduction of the torque ripple, which is achieved by means of a five-level torque comparator. Extensive experimentation is performed and it is shown that the reduction of the current harmonics is in essence almost the same as in another recently developed DTC scheme, based on the use of a single virtual voltage vector. However, the achieved torque ripple reduction, which is verified experimentally, makes the scheme superior when compared to the existing approaches. At the same time, developed scheme retains qualities of conventional DTC schemes, such as simple structure and fast response. Its additional beneficial feature is the easiness of implementation.

Reliability considerations of a fuel cell backup power system for telecom applications

A commercial fuel cell backup power unit is tested in real life operating conditions at a base station of a Turkish telecom operator. The fuel cell system responds to 256 of 260 electric power outages successfully, providing the required power to the base station. Reliability of the fuel cell backup power unit is found to be 98.5% at the system level. On the other hand, a qualitative reliability analysis at the component level is carried out. Implications of the power management algorithm on reliability is discussed. Moreover, integration of the backup power unit to the base station ecosystem is reviewed in the context of reliability. Impact of inverter design on the stability of the output power is outlined. Significant current harmonics are encountered when a generic inverter is used. However, ripples are attenuated significantly when a custom design inverter is used. Further, fault conditions are considered for real world case studies such as running out of hydrogen, a malfunction in the system, or an unprecedented operating scheme. Some design guidelines are suggested for hybridization of the backup power unit for an uninterrupted operation.

Enhancement of Steady-State Performance in Direct Torque Controlled Dual-three Phase Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machine Drives with Modified Switching Table

This paper investigates the improved switching-table-based direct torque control strategies (ST-DTC) for dual three-phase permanent magnet synchronous machine drives. The classical ST-DTC scheme for dual three-phase drives is usually seriously penalized by significant current harmonics, which cause large losses and reduce the efficiency of the drive system. Hence, a modified switching table consisting of 12 new synthetic voltage vectors is proposed. With this new switching table, not only the variables relating to the torque production are well controlled, but also the variables contributing to the current harmonics are eliminated successfully within one sampling period. Furthermore, a simple modified torque regulator is proposed to reduce the torque ripple and the steady-state error of torque which is usually observed in the real-time system. The switching sequence which is most suitable for the implementation of the real-time system has been proposed to minimize the computation burden. The proposed strategy only changes the switching table and torque regulator without any major modifications, and hence, the merits of the classical direct torque control, i.e., simple structure and good robustness, are still preserved. The experimental results validate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.

Fuzzy logic speed control and current-harmonic reduction in permanent-magnet brushless AC drives

Fuzzy logic-based algorithms are widely employed in variable-speed drives. However, although they provide an excellent speed-control performance, they may result in significant current harmonics. These may be reduced by employing a non-linear distribution of fuzzy sets in the membership function of the output variable, albeit with some deterioration in the speed-control performance. A simple adaptive fuzzy logic control algorithm, in which the speed-error threshold may be either fixed or self-tuned, is proposed. Simulations and measurements on vector-controlled permanent-magnet brushless AC drives confirm that the proposed adaptive fuzzy logic control results in an excellent speed-control performance and robustness to parameter variations, while current harmonics are reduced. Its performance is compared with that which is achieved when conventional fuzzy logic and PI speed control are employed.