Semester

Spring

Date of Graduation

2008

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources

Department

Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering

Committee Chair

Parviz Famouri

Committee Co-Chair

Mohammad Choudhry

Committee Member

Boyd Edwards

Committee Member

Powsiri Klinkhachorn

Committee Member

Brian Woerner.

Abstract

In high performance drives where it is desirable to exploit the usefulness of reluctance torque and machine saliency, permanent magnet synchronous brushless motors are machines of choice. However, speed control of these machines especially in the flux weakening region becomes more complex due to the non-linear coupling among the winding currents as well as the nonlinearity present in the torque. While numerous research efforts in the past have considered control and efficiency improvements of induction motors, and synchronous motors with field windings, research efforts in developing an efficiency optimization and control strategy applicable to all salient-type permanent magnet synchronous brushless motors are still in their infancy.;A traditional control technique that has commonly been employed in efficiency improvement efforts is the stator's zero d-axis current (i ds=0) technique. In this method, the rotor flux is aligned with the direct-axis so that the stator's direct-axis current is zero and the torque becomes a linear function of the stator's quadrature-axis current. Although this method achieves decoupling of winding currents and simplicity of control, it does not fully exploit the use of the machine's saliency and reluctance torque, and is also not well-suited for wide-range load operations. The maximum torque per ampere (MTPA) technique is another less complex technique that has been considered which fully exploits the use of machine saliency with motor torque selected along the geometric curve of minimum-amplitude current space vectors for minimum loss operation. The drawback of the MTPA technique is that it does not provide high efficiency performance for synchronous reluctance motors running at low fractional loads.;In this work, the problem of efficiency optimization in the salient-type permanent magnet synchronous brushless motors is investigated. A machine model which includes the effect of core losses is proposed for developing a loss minimization algorithm that dynamically determines the optimal reference currents and voltages required for minimizing the total electrical losses (copper losses and core losses) within the feasible operating regions imposed by the motor and inverter capacities. The loss minimization strategy is implemented within a speed control loop for a synchronous reluctance motor drive and the effectiveness of the proposed scheme is validated by comparing performances with that of the traditional maximum torque per ampere and stator's zero d-axis current vector control methods. It is shown that the proposed scheme offers the advantages of simplicity and superior performance throughout the entire operating range, and also improves motor efficiency to 96% at full load and full-speed operating condition.

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