An Improved Sensorless Nonlinear Control Based on SC-MRAS Estimator of Open-End Winding Five-Phase Induction Motor Fed by Dual NPC Inverter: Hardware-in-the-Loop Implementation

Abstract

This paper introduces a sensorless nonlinear control scheme based on feedback linearization control (FLC) of an open-end winding five-phase induction motor (OeW-5PIM) topology fed by a dual neutral point clamped (NPC) inverter. The suggested sensorless control is combined with the sliding mode (SM) controller to improve the dynamic performance (i.e., rising time, overshoot, etc.) of the studied motor. Furthermore, a stator-current-based model reference adaptive system (SC-MRAS) estimator is designed for the estimation of the rotor flux and the motor speed. In parallel, to enhance the robustness of the designed sensorless control against motor parameter changes, an adaptive estimation method is suggested to estimate the rotor and stator resistances during low-speed ranges. The estimation method of motor resistances is associated with the suggested sensorless control to further improve the speed estimation accuracy and minimize the speed estimation error. Finally, the effectiveness and correctness of the suggested control with the examined estimators are validated in real-time implementation using a hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) based on the dSpace 1103 board.