Aim

Study of performance characteristic of BLDC motor using MATLAB simulink

Introduction
Conventional dc motors are highly efficient and their characteristics make them suitable for use as servomotors. However, their only drawback is that they need a commutator and brushes which are subject to wear and require maintenance. When the functions of commutator and brushes were implemented by solid-state switches, maintenance-free motors were realised. These motors are now known as brushless dc motors. In this chapter, the basic structures, drive circuits, fundamental principles, steady state characteristics, and applications of brushless dc motors will be discussed.

Basic structures
The construction of modern brushless motors is very similar to the ac motor, known as the permanent magnet synchronous motor. Fig.1 illustrates the structure of a typical threephase brushless dc motor. The stator windings are similar to those in a polyphase ac motor, and the rotor is composed of one or more permanent magnets. Brushless dc motors are different from ac synchronous motors in that the former incorporates some means to detect the rotor position (or magnetic poles) to produce signals to control the electronic switches as shown in Fig.2. The most common position/pole sensor is the Hall element, but some motors use optical sensors. Although the most orthodox and efficient motors are three-phase, two-phase brushless dc motors are also very commonly used for the simple construction and drive circuits. Fig.1 shows the cross section of a two-phase motor having auxiliary salient poles.

Fig.1 Brushless dc motor = Permanent magnet ac motor + Electronic commutator

Performance of Brushless DC Motors

Speed-Torque (T~w) curve
Still assuming wL<<Rand position feed back keeps V and E(and hence I) in phase, the voltage equation can be simplified in algebraic form as
V = E + RI

Substituting relations of E~wr and T~I, we obtain

The corresponding T~w curve is shown in Fig.13 for a constant voltage.

Efficiency
Efficiency is defined as the ratio of output power and input power, i.e.

where Pin= mVI, and Pout= Tloadwr. In term of the power flow, Pin= Pcu+ PFe+ Pmec+ Pout
where Pcu= mRI2 is the copper loss due to winding resistance, PFe the iron loss due to hysteresis and eddy currents, and Pmec the mechanical loss due to windage and friction.

Simulation of BLDC motor

Circuit Description
A three-phase motor rated 1 kW, 500 Vdc, 3000 rpm is fed by a six step voltage inverter. The inverter is a MOSFET bridge of the SimPowerSystems library. A speed regulator is used to control the DC bus voltage. The inverter gates signals are produced by decoding the Hall effect signlas of the motor. The three-phase output of the inverter are applied to the PMSM block's stator windings. The load torque applied to the machine's shaft is first set to 0 and steps to its nominal value (11 N.m) at t = 0.1 s. Two control loops are used. The inner loop synchronises the inverter gates signals with the electromotive forces. The outer loop controls the motor's speed by varying the DC bus voltage.

Demonstration
Observe the sawtooth shape of the motor currents. That's caused by the DC bus which applies a constant voltage during 120 electrical degrees to the motor inductances. The initial current is high and decreases during the acceleration to the nominal speed. When the nominal torque is applied, the stator current increases to maintain the nominal speed. The sawtooth waveform is also observed in the electromagnetic torque signal Te. However, the motor's inertia prevents this noise from appearing in the motor's speed waveform.

Result