This application claims priority under 35 USC § 119 to EP Patent Application No. 04104340.7, the disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.
This invention relates to a speed sensorless control method for an induction motor that is supplied by a PWM inverter through an output LC filter.
A voltage source PWM inverter enables stepless speed and torque control of AC motors, allowing reduced energy consumption and increased control performance. The use of a PWM inverter, however, not only brings advantages but also causes unwanted effects in the motor. The output voltage of the inverter consists of sharp-edged voltage pulses, producing bearing currents and high voltage stresses in motor insulations [1], [2]. The oscillation at the switching frequency causes additional losses and acoustic noise. These phenomena can be eliminated by adding an LC filter to the output of the PWM inverter. In addition, the EMI shielding of the motor cable may be avoided if the voltage is nearly sinusoidal.
Adding an LC filter to a variable speed drive makes the motor control more difficult. Usually, a simple volts-per-hertz control method is chosen. Better control performance is achieved by using vector control, i.e. field oriented control. However, there are only few publications that deal with the vector control of a motor fed through an LC filter [3]–[5]. In these papers, an extra current or voltage measurement was necessary, and a speed encoder was used. In order to obtain cost savings and reliability improvements, a full-order observer was proposed in [6], making additional current or voltage measurements unnecessary.
Recently, the speed sensorless control of ac motors has become popular. Promising estimation methods for speed sensorless induction motor drives are speed-adaptive full-order observers [7] combined with improvements in regeneration mode operation [8], [9]. However, a speed sensorless control methods for induction motor supplied through an LC filter are not yet published.
A problem associated with the prior art control systems with an output filter is the need for either the measurements of current or voltage from the motor or the use of speed encoders. Both of the above solutions can increase costs both for installation and maintenance on the system.
An exemplary method disclosed herein is based on the use of an adaptive full-order observer, and no additional voltage, current or speed measurements are needed for the vector control of the motor. The rotor speed adaptation is based on the estimation error of the inverter current. The rotor speed adaptation can be based on the measured inverter current due to the surprisingly noticed fact, that the quadrature components of the inverter current and the stator current are almost identical, i.e. the applied LC filter does not distort the q component of the current.
An exemplary advantage of the method is that the induction motor can be controlled without any additional measurements even when LC filter is used in the inverter output. With the method of the invention the benefits achieved with the inverter output LC filter can be utilized in connection with a drive that uses no additional measurement or feedback signals.
This can be achieved by using a speed-adaptive observer, which is extended for the induction motor drive equipped with an LC filter, resulting in a drive where only the inverter output current and dc-link voltage are measured. A simple observer gain is used, and a speed-adaptation law basing on the estimation error of the inverter current is employed. The regeneration mode operation at low speeds is further stabilized by modifying the speed adaptation law. The vector control of the motor described in the specification is based on nested control loops.
In the following the invention will be described in greater detail by means of preferred embodiments with reference to the attached drawings, in which
a, 3b and 4 show loci of a current estimation error,
a and 6b show observer poles,
In the following first the system model and control are explained. Then attention is given to dynamic analysis of the system and simulation and experimental results are also described.
System Model and Control
A principle of the control system is shown in
A. Filter and Motor Models
In a reference frame rotating at angular frequency ωs, the equations for the LC filter are
where Lf is the inductance and RLf the series resistance of the inductor, and Cf is the capacitance of the filter.
The motor model is based on the inverse-Γ model [10] of the induction motor. The stator and rotor voltage equations are
respectively, where Rs and RR are the stator and rotor resistances, respectively, and iR is the rotor current. The stator and rotor flux linkages are
ψs=(L′s+LM)iS+LMiR (5)
ψR=LM(is+iR) (6)
respectively, where L′s denotes the stator transient inductance and LM is the magnetizing inductance. Based on (1)–(6), the state-space representation of the system can be written as shown in (7) and (8).
The state vector is x=[iA uS is ψR]T, and the two time constants are defined as τ′π=L′s/(Rs+RR) and πr=LM/RR.
B. Cascade Control
The motor control forms the two outermost control loops. The stator current is is controlled by a PI-type controller with cross-coupling compensation, and the rotor speed is governed by a PI-controller. In addition, a PI-type rotor flux controller is used. It should be noted, however, that the presented control system is provided only as an example.
C. Adaptive Full-Order Observer
The system states are estimated by means of a full-order observer. The electrical angular speed of the rotor, included in the state space representation (7), is estimated using an adaptation mechanism. The observer is implemented in the estimated rotor flux reference frame, i.e., in a reference frame where {circumflex over (ψ)}R={circumflex over (ψ)}R+j0. The observer is given as
{circumflex over ({dot over (x)}=Â{circumflex over (x)}+BuA+K(iA−îA) (9)
The system matrix and the observer gain vector in (9) are
K=[k1 k2 k3 k4]T (11)
where the estimated states are marked by the symbol ‘^’.
The conventional speed adaptation law for the induction motor [7] is modified for the case where an LC filter is used. The estimation error of the inverter current is used for the speed adaptation, instead of the estimation error of the stator current as in the prior art systems. In order to stabilize the regeneration mode at low speeds, the idea of a rotated current estimation error [9], [11] is adopted.
The speed-adaptation law in the estimated rotor flux reference frame is
{circumflex over (ω)}m=−KpIm{(iA−îA)e−jφ}−Ki∫Im{(iA−îA)e−jφ}dt (12)
where Kp and Ki are real adaptation gains, and the angle φ changes the direction of the error projection. The digital implementation of the adaptive full-order observer is based on a simple symmetric Euler method [12].
According to the method of the invention, the inverter output current vector iA and the inverter output voltage vector uA are determined. These determinations are normal current and voltage measurements. In a practice, the inverter output voltage vector uA is replaced in equation (9) by its reference uA,ref. Typically only two phase currents are measured to obtain the current vector. The output voltage of the inverter can be determined together from information of the states of the output switches and from voltage of the intermediate circuit.
Method of the invention further comprises a step of forming a full-order observer having a system matrix  and gain vector K as explained above. The observer produces the estimated rotor flux linkage vector {circumflex over (ψ)}R, the estimated stator current vector îs, the estimated stator voltage vector ûs and the estimated inverter output current vector îA. These estimates can be used in the motor control in normal manner.
Since the inverter output current is both estimated and determined, the difference of them can be used in a speed adaptation loop, which produces an estimate for the electrical angular speed {circumflex over (ω)}m of the induction machine. Basically the speed adaptation law corrects the estimate of the angular speed so that the determined and estimated current vectors are similar.
Surprisingly the q components of estimated stator current vector and inverter output current vector are almost identical, which makes it possible to use the inverter output current instead of stator current in the speed adaptation as explained later.
With the method of the invention, all required information is gathered in order to control the induction machine.
Steady-State Analysis
The dynamics of the estimation error {tilde over (x)}=x−{circumflex over (x)} is obtained from (7) and (9):
{tilde over ({dot over (x)}=(A−KC){tilde over (x)}+(A−Â){circumflex over (x)} (13)
where the difference between system matrices is
For the steady-state analysis, the derivative of estimation error (13) is set to zero. The operation point is determined by the synchronous angular frequency ωs, the slip angular frequency ωr=ωs−ωm, and the estimated rotor flux {circumflex over (ψ)}R. The example values of a 2.2-kW four-pole induction motor (400 V, 50 Hz), shown in Table I, were used for the following analysis.
If the angle correction is not used in the adaptation law (12), the rotor speed estimate is calculated according to the imaginary part of the current estimation error. This kind of adaptation law works well in the motoring mode (where ωsωr>0), but at low synchronous speeds in the regeneration mode (ωsωr<0), the imaginary part of the current estimation error changes its sign at a certain slip angular frequency as can be seen in
The unstable operation can be avoided if the real part of the current estimation error is also taken into account in the speed adaptation. Correspondingly, the current estimation error is rotated by a factor e−jφ. The angle φ is selected as [9]
where φmax is the maximum correction angle and ωφ is the limit for the synchronous angular frequency after which the correction is not used.
The influence of the angle correction is shown in
Dynamic Analysis
The dynamic behavior of the speed-adaptive observer can be analyzed via linearization. The operating point is set by the equilibrium quantities: the rotor angular speed ωm0 and the synchronous angular frequency ωs0, and the rotor flux ψR0. The linearized estimation error is
{tilde over ({dot over (x)}=(A0−KC){tilde over (x)}+Mx0(ωm−{circumflex over (ω)}m) (16)
The transfer function from the speed estimation error to the inverter current estimation error obtained from (16) is
Based on (12), the transfer function from the imaginary part of the rotated inverter current error, Im{(iA−îA)e−jφ}, to the speed estimate, {circumflex over (ω)}m, is
The resulting linearized system model for dynamic analysis is shown in
The observer gain K affects the stability of the system. In an induction motor drive without an LC filter, the adaptive observer is stable in the motoring mode even with zero gain [8]. However, zero gain cannot be used when an LC filter is present.
In order to obtain a simple observer structure, the observer gain
K=[k, 0 0 0]T (19)
is proposed. The poles obtained are shown in
Simulation Results
The system was investigated by computer simulation with Matlab/Simulink software. The data of a 2.2-kW induction motor, given in Table I, were used for the simulations. The LC filter was designed according to the design rules in [13], [14]. The sampling frequency was equal to the switching frequency of 5 kHz. The bandwidths of the controllers were 500 Hz for the inverter current, 250 Hz for the stator voltage, 150 Hz for the stator current, 15 Hz for the rotor speed, and 1.5 Hz for the rotor flux. The speed estimate was filtered using a low-pass filter having the bandwidth of 40 Hz. The reference voltage uA,ref was used in the observer instead of the actual inverter output voltage uA. The observer gain was K=[3000s−1 0 0 0]T, and the adaptation gains were chosen as Kp=10(As)−1 and Ki=20000 (As2)−1.
Slow speed reversals at load are difficult for sensorless induction motor drives. Although the exact motor and filter parameters are used in the simulation, small vibrations appear in iAq and isq at t=7.8 s when the synchronous frequency is zero. More problems are encountered if slower speed reversals are needed or parameter estimates are inaccurate. It is to be noted that the q components of the inverter and stator currents are nearly equal, which makes it possible to use iAq in the speed adaptation law instead of isq as in the prior art systems. The voltage and current waveforms before and after the LC filter are illustrated in detail in
The experimental setup is illustrated in
The vibration can be attenuated by lowering the observer gain at low speeds. The observer gain is selected as
where k1l and k1h are the minimum and the maximum gains. The speed limit after which the maximum gain is used is ωd. The limit angular frequencies ωφ for the angle correction in (15) must also be changed because of the lower gain at low speeds. In order to avoid stepwise changes, the limit is selected as
where ωφl and ωφh are the limit angular frequencies for the angle correction at low and high speeds, respectively.
Experimental results obtained for the modified observer gain and angle correction are shown in
The vibrations at the zero synchronous speed are reduced significantly, but not totally removed.
It should be noted, that the described control system is only one possible system for controlling an induction machine based on the method of the invention. It will be obvious to a person skilled in the art that, as the technology advances, the inventive concept can be implemented in various ways. The invention and its embodiments are not limited to the examples described above but may vary within the scope of the claims.
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