This invention relates generally to controlling electric motors, and more particularly to sensorless angular speed control of an induction motor.
Adjustable speed motor drives for induction motors are widely used in industrial applications due to their low maintenance cost and high performance. However, the control of induction motors is challenging due to highly nonlinear dynamics. Among various means, vector (field oriented) control appears to be a good solution and has evolved as a mature technology. Speed sensorless motor drives for electric motors are advantageous in practice by avoiding measuring the motor speed.
The prior art describes speed sensorless control technologies including a voltage model-based direct integration approach, an adaptive observer approach, and an extended Kalman filter approach, etc. The voltage model-based direct integration suffers from accumulation error due to inaccurate measurement.
A flux control block 101 determines a stator current 114 used to control the rotor flux linkage in the d-axis. A signal 115 is an an estimate or true stator current, in the d-axis, produced by a flux estimator 106. A difference 116 between the signals 115 and 114 is used by a current control block 103 to determine a reference stator voltage 123 in the d-axis. Similarly, a signal 117 denotes the desired rotor speed reference of the induction motor.
A signal 118 denotes an estimated rotor speed produced by a speed estimator 107 based on output signal 126 of the flux estimator 106. A difference 119 between signals 117 and 118 is used to determine a reference stator current 120, in the q-axis, by a speed control block 102.
An estimated or true stator current 121, in the q-axis, is compared to the reference stator current 120, in an imaginary q-axis used to control the motor torque, to produce a difference signal 122. The current control block 103 determines the stator voltage signals 123, in d- and q-axes, on the basis of difference signals 116 and 122. A Clarke or Park transformation 104 converts the desired stator voltages signals, in d- and q-axes, into three-phase voltages 124 to drive the induction motor 105.
Note that the flux estimator 106 takes the three-phase voltages 124 and sensed 131 phase currents 125 as input signals, and outputs estimated or measured stator currents 115 and 121, an estimated rotor flux amplitude 112, and an estimated rotor speed signal 118 to produce the difference signals 113, 116, 119, and 122. The signal 119 is used for speed control 102.
The performance of the prior art sensorless speed motor drives relies heavily on the performance of the flux and speed estimators 106 and 107.
Balanced two-phases quantities, as a result of Clarke transformation of balanced three-phases quantities, are still in orthogonal stationary frame, and thus called quantities in balanced two-phases orthogonal stationary frame. Some prior art further applies Park transformation to the quantities in balanced two-phases orthogonal stationary frame which converts the quantities into quantities in balanced two-phases orthogonal rotating frame.
A block 204 represents an estimator, which is designed on the basis of the induction motor model, as a result of applying Clarke, or Clarke and Park transformations, to produce estimates of stator currents, rotor flux, and rotor speed signals, which are referred here as state coordinates. Note that both Clarke and Park transformations are not state transformation, and thus state variables in the induction motor model bear the same physical meanings after Clarke and Park transformations are applied. This imposes limitations on choices of estimators, and thus leads to unsatisfactory estimation performance. For instance, the voltage model-based direct integration suffers accumulation error due to inaccurate measurement. Adaptive observer and extended Kalman filter approaches yield slow speed tracking performance because the speed is treated as an unknown parameter and its identification is slow.
This fact is elaborated by
Overall, most prior art speed sensorless motor drives produce limited speed tracking performance because estimator design is performed in fixed state coordinates and under unnecessary assumption (for instance parameter assumption). Performing estimator design for a system with fixed state coordinates fails to exploit the freedom of state transformations, which may simplify the induction motor model thus admit high performance estimators.
The embodiments of the invention provide a speed sensorless control system and method applicable to motor drives of variable speed induction motors. The embodiments use state transformations of a model of the induction motor to simplify the method.
This invention is based on the realization that a high bandwidth speed sensorless control system is difficult to achieve because the induction motor model in original coordinates is highly coupled, and not in any structure admitting a simple observer design unless certain assumptions are imposed, for instance, treating the rotor speed as an unknown parameter, as in the prior art.
This invention teaches that the state transformation, or change of coordinates, can be introduced to put the induction motor model into certain structures, and thus the induction motor model in new coordinates is partially decoupled. The structured induction motor model typically simplifies the observer design, and leads to high performance in estimation.
The invention further teaches the determination of observer gains to enforce fast convergence of estimation error dynamics. In one embodiment, applying a state transformation to the induction motor model gives a transformed induction motor model such that estimation error dynamics of the rotor flux and stator current in the d-axis are partially decoupled from the rest estimation errors. By enforcing the fast convergence of the estimation error of the rotor flux and stator current in the d-axis, the rest estimation errors dynamics are simplified, and thus the observer gain selection is relatively simple.
In the prior art, the observer gain is based on error dynamics, which are nonlinear, thus the design is complicated, and stability cannot be guaranteed.
The embodiments of the invention provide a method and system for controlling an angular rotor speed of an induction motor.
To facilitate the detailed description of the embodiments of the invention for a speed sensorless control system and method for induction motors, the following notations are defined. Assume ζ is a dummy variable, then ζ denotes a measured variable, {circumflex over (ζ)} denotes an estimate of the variable, and {circumflex over (ζ)}=ζ−{circumflex over (ζ)} is an estimation error.
Induction Motor Model
A model of the induction motor including stator currents, flux and angular speed as its states. This choice of states define a set of state coordinates, called the original state coordinates, can be expressed by the equations in the following induction motor model
where y represents sensed signals, ωI is the angular speed of a reference frame, and
Note that the induction motor model (1) is in an orthognal rotating frame with a rotation speed of ω1; and quantities ids, iqs, Φdr, Φqr, ω are referred as balanced two-phase quantities in orthognal rotating frame, i.e. both Clarke and Park transformations have been applied to arrive at the model (1).
When ω1=0, the equations in the model (1) reduced to
which represents the induction model without applying a Park transformation. Park transformation are known to those of ordinary skill in the art, and thus not repeated here. In another words, the induction motor model (1) is in orthognal stationary frame, and quantities ids, iqs, Φdr, Φqr, ω are referred as balanced two-phase quantities in orthognal stationary frame, i.e. Clarke transformation has been applied to arrive at the model (1).
Conventional estimator designs are usually based on the model according to Equations (1) or (2), which have the same state coordinates denoted by (ids, iqs, Φdr, Φqr, ω)T. A direct application of existing estimator designs, e.g., sliding mode observer, high gain observer, and a Luenberger observer to the model of Equations (1) or (2) produce an unsatisfactory estimation of stator currents, rotor flux, and the rotor speed due to highly coupled nonlinear terms in the left hand side of differential Equations (1) or (2). For instance, the term ωΦqr in the right hand side of the differential Equation defining ids i.e.,
The induction motor model in Equations (1) or (2) is highly coupled because of the fact that the right hand side of each differential Equation in (1) or (2) depends on almost all state variables. This invention realizes that such a tight coupling poses significant difficulty in design of speed sensorless control motor drives, including controller and estimator design, to achieve high-bandwidth speed control loop. Performing estimator design on the basis of the completely unstructured induction motor model in the original state coordinates, i.e., in Equations (1) or (2), is challenging and ineffective.
This invention realizes introduction of state transformations to represent the induction motor model under different state coordinates might partially break up coupling among state variables, and the resultant induction motor model after applying a state transformation, named after a transformed induction motor model, bears certain structures, which admit simple estimator design. The invention provides a method and system and embodiments for controlling an angular speed of the induction motor by introducing state transformations.
As shown in
In one embodiment, the state transformation can be
z(x)=└idsiqsαΦdr+ωΦqrαΦqr−ωΦdrω┘. (3)
where z=(z1,z2,z3,z4,z5)T, and T is a transpose operator. One can verify that the state transformation is globally defined and has the inverse transformation
with η=α2+z52. The transformed induction motor model is written as
ż=f
z(z)+gz1(z)T1+gz2u,
y=Cz, (4)
where gz2=gx2, and
The terms κi,3≦i≦5 are given by
In
Σ1:(z1,z3),
Σ2:(z2,z4), and
Σ3: z5.
By verifying certain assumptions, for example, all states z are bounded, and subsystems Σ1 and Σ2 have certain structures, various systematic estimator design techniques such as a high gain observer or a finite time convergent observer of the states can be applied to produce state estimates {circumflex over (z)}1, {circumflex over (z)}2. The resultant estimators for subsystems Σ1 and Σ2 guarantees that estimation errors, i.e., a difference between the true state z1, z2 and its estimate {circumflex over (z)}1,{circumflex over (z)}2, are bounded or convergent to zero.
Note that while designing the state estimator 601, state variables z2 and z3 appearing in the model of Σ1 are treated as bounded uncertainties. Similarly, while designing the state estimator 602, state variable z3 appearing in the model of Σ2 is treated as bounded uncertainties, on the other hand, state variable z1 appearing in the model of Σ2 is treated as known and replaced by {circumflex over (z)}1; while the design the state estimator 603, both state variables {circumflex over (z)}1 and {circumflex over (z)}2 are treated as known and replaced by {circumflex over (z)}1 and {circumflex over (z)}2 respectively.
As an example, a high gain observer technique can be applied to design estimators 601 and 602. While designing estimators using high gain observer technique, one can treat
as uncertainties bounded by L1>0, and design the estimator 601 for the subsystem Σ1 as follows
where l3>>l1>>0 depend on the bound of uncertainties.
Similarly,
can be treated as uncertainties bounded by L2, and the estimator 602 for subsystem Σ2 takes the following expression
where l4>>l2>>0 depend on L2. Similarly, with z1 treated as known and replaced by {circumflex over (z)}1, the estimator 602 for subsystem Σ2 can also be taken as follows
where
{circumflex over (η)}=α2+{circumflex over (z)}52,
{circumflex over (κ)}4=κ(z1,z2,{circumflex over (z)}3,{circumflex over (z)}4,{circumflex over (z)}5).
Another embodiment of estimators 601 and 602 can be obtained by applying finite time convergent observer design techniques for both subsystems. For instance, a finite time convergent observer for Σ2 is
where sign{ε} is an operator given by
One embodiment of estimator 603 has the following form
where l51 and l52 are estimator gains, and
ρ1(t)=2μα(z1{circumflex over (z)}4−z2{circumflex over (z)}3), and
ρ2(t)=2μ(z1{circumflex over (z)}3+z2{circumflex over (z)}4)
If the sign of rotor rotation is known, another embodiment of estimator 603 is
where l51 and l52 are constant, and
{circumflex over (z)}
5=√{square root over ({circumflex over (z)}5)}sign(z5).
In one embodiment, the estimator 604 for subsystems Σ1 and Σ2 is
where {circumflex over (z)}1 and {circumflex over (z)}2 are estimates of z1 and z2, respectively,
and S is a matrix determined by solving
S+A
T
S+SA=CC
T
with
Although the invention has been described by way of examples of preferred embodiments, it is to be understood that various other adaptations and modifications can be made within the spirit and scope of the invention. Therefore, it is the object of the appended claims to cover all such variations and modifications as come within the true spirit and scope of the invention.
This U.S. patent application is related to U.S. Ser. No. ______ (MERL-2783) co-filed herewith Feb. 3, 2015, and incorporated herein. Both Applications disclose a method and system for controlling the angular rotor speed of sensorless induction motors.