TORQUE RIPPLE REDUCTION OF A BRUSHLESS DC MOTOR USING Y-SOURCE CONVERTER

Abstract

The brushless DC motor (BLDC) is a low cost, reliable and efficient motor for low power applications. In general, the speed, torque and current of the BLDC motor are controlled using a well tuned PI controller in the inner and outer control loops. This controller will be effective in reducing the dynamic speed error, but will produce large current ripples. This reference current when given to the inner control loop and controlled using hall-effect position sensing technique, leads to comparatively large ripples in the torque. Because of large dynamic behavior of dc link voltage when nominal rating capacitor is used, there will be torque ripples and reduction in rotor speed from the reference current value. Hence, to mitigate this torque ripples in BLDC motor a fast acting adjustable dc link voltage like chopper is generally used. The effective dc link voltage control with voltage boosting and controlling action is observed with Y-source converter and is compared with a Z-source converter in this paper. The Y-source converter is designed in such a way that, it will effectively control the speed and also produces lesser current ripples reference. Further, the inverter topology uses a six switch basic configuration but with a new switching strategy. The results are compared with a Z-source converter with the proposed Y-source converter under variable load torque and variable speed cases in MATLAB/ SIMULINK environment. It is found that, the torque ripples are reduced effectively without much change in the reference speed. Also, even at higher rotor speeds, the torque ripples and surges are also lesser.