Improved Switching Strategy For A Single-Phase Brushless Direct Current Fan Drive and Its Impact On Efficiency
Improved Switching Strategy For A Single-Phase Brushless Direct Current Fan Drive and Its Impact On Efficiency
Improved Switching Strategy For A Single-Phase Brushless Direct Current Fan Drive and Its Impact On Efficiency
fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TIA.2018.2850017, IEEE
Transactions on Industry Applications
Abstract—Advancing the turn-off angle of the phase current drives in the passenger compartment), tight standards regard-
of brushless direct current (BLDC) motors is a common control ing electromagnetic interference (especially for automotive
practice to improve the operating behavior and energy conversion applications), volume (e.g., integration of a drive application
efficiency of such drives by, e.g., reduction of current peaks,
copper losses, and breaking torques. This paper investigates a in an already existing application), robustness (e.g., extreme
refined switching strategy for a single-phase BLDC motor with temperature range from -40 to 120 ◦ C, vibrations, lifetime of
bifilar winding to increase the energy conversion efficiency of the 10 years and more), drift of parameters (e.g., bearing wear-
system. In addition to advancing the phase current turn-off angle, out), cost-efficiency, and producibility (e.g., few and easy
the turn-on angle is delayed to improve the drive’s performance mountable parts), e.g., illustrated by [7]. BLDCs are known
and increase the efficiency even further. This efficiency increase
of up to 20.6 % is verified experimentally for a speed range from for high efficiency, high power density, low rotor inertia and
3000 to 8000 rpm, translating into a reduction of copper losses of weight, good controllability, and for low-maintenance [8].
up to 37.4 % or a decrease of current peaks by 27.4 %. The focus On the downside, position sensors, e.g., encoders or Hall
is on sub-fractional horsepower single-phase BLDC motors with effect sensors, are required for effective control of BLDC
bifilar winding which, concerning this matter, have not drawn motors. There are also estimation-based, i.e., sensorless control
much attention in the literature yet. The findings show that the
improved switching strategy can reduce current peaks, breaking strategies which, on the one hand, reduce the component count
torques, copper losses, and therefore increase efficiency over the but, on the other hand, are more complex and often lack
speed range of interest for fan applications. precision [8]–[10].
BLDC motors are essentially permanent magnet (PM) syn-
Keywords—bifilar winding; BLDC; commutation angle; effi- chronous motors and are manufactured in many different
ciency; sub-fractional horsepower; variable speed.
designs (inner or outer rotor, surface or interior magnets, etc.).
In low-cost and sub-fractional horsepower applications, the
I. I NTRODUCTION single-phase stator often houses a concentrated winding which
can be either of unifilar or bifilar type. These motors are
Owing to their advantages, brushless direct current (BLDC)
combined with an inverter circuit responsible for the electronic
motors are progressively substituting established motor con-
commutation [10]. The equivalent circuit diagram of a BLDC
cepts in many applications. Nowadays, BLDCs are employed
motor is shown in Fig. 1. The inverter (not shown in Fig. 1)
in office automation, household appliances, and especially in
often applies a pulse-width modulated phase voltage up to the
the automotive sector and aerospace industry [1]. Examples are
motor so that the phase current ip and the back electromotive
given by LED car headlights [2], electric brake boosters [3],
force (EMF) uEMF produce a constant torque. Joule losses are
electric oil pumps for gearbox lubrication [4], electric servo
modeled with a resistor R and main and leakage inductances
steerings [5], and many other auxiliary electric drives [6];
are represented by Lm and Lσ , respectively.
replacing well-known solutions in the automotive sector. The
Ideally, the back-EMF of BLDC motors is trapezoidal,
high degree of integration in such applications often brings
requiring rectangular phase current waveforms to produce
forth additional, stringent requirements, for example on effi-
constant torque [11] (see Fig. 2). Due to the inductive and
ciency (e.g., additional heat in an already highly integrated
resistive components of the stator winding, the phase current
application), acoustic noise (e.g., household appliances or
waveform also differs from an ideal rectangular one. Applying
a constant phase voltage to the stator winding, the phase
current rises according to an exponential function with the
The financial support by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science, Re-
search, and Economy and the National Foundation for Research, Technology, time constant τ = L/R, where L = Lm + Lσ . These nonideal
and Development is gratefully acknowledged. waveforms are discussed in detail in Sections IV and V.
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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TIA.2018.2850017, IEEE
Transactions on Industry Applications
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Transactions on Industry Applications
LA1 LB1
LA3 LB3 Fig. 5. Flow chart of the multi-domain simulation model [26].
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Fig. 6. Simulation results for different commutation strategies: (a) straightforward approach with αp = αd = 0◦ , (b) conventional approach with αp =
17◦ , αd = 0◦ , (c) proposed approach with αp = 17◦ , αd = 7.5◦ (uEMF imported from finite element analysis realized with JMAG
R
[27]).
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SA
Gating Signals
SB Driver Circuit Outputs
VI Fig. 10. Measured back-EMF of phase A and position signal of the magnetic
VII encoder.
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Fig. 11. Measured phase currents iA and iB at n = 5000 rpm, (a) with solely applied earlier turn-off at αp,opt , and (b) with both, delayed turn-on and earlier
turn-off at αd,opt and αp,opt , respectively.
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Fig. 12. (a) Variation of the turn-off angle αp at different speeds n, (b) variation of the turn-on angle αd respectively at the obtained optimal commutation
angles αp,opt at different speeds n.
Fig. 13. αd,p -n plane (a)-(b) with detailed position of the optimal commutation angles αp,opt and αp,opt + αd,opt in terms of speed n, (c)-(d) show measured
currents Irms with their respective fitted curves, where (c) shows the results of an arbitrarily chosen experiment with n = 3000 rpm and (d) at a higher speed
of n = 7000 rpm.
motor current Irms , the total motor current peak value ipeak , F. Post-Processing Methodology to Find the Optimal Turn-On
and the electrical input power of the drive Pin . and Turn-Off Angles
A decrease of the optimum turn-on angle αd,opt for in-
creasing n can be seen from Fig. 13(b) (opposite to the
increase of αp,opt for increasing n in Fig. 13(a)). This can The optimal turn-off angle αp,opt is obtained by fitting a
be explained by (1), showing the inductive characteristic of quadratic polynomial curve into the measured data points and
the electric motor. With increasing speed and thus electrical finding its minimum. This is done by applying a robust linear
frequency, the impedance of the inductance and hence the least-squares fitting method (MATLABs “fit”) and from there
phase angle increase, both linearly. Therefore, the current has on, the minimum is found by curve sketching of the returned
to be turned on earlier than at lower speeds, see Fig. 15. A 2nd order polynomial function. The same procedure is applied
detailed description of this behavior is proposed in [13]. when identifying αd,opt in Section V-E. The high measurement
quality is reflected by the standard deviation σi of the residues
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Fig. 14. Speed-dependent optimal commutation angles αp,opt and αp,opt + αd,opt , (a) average peak current ipeak , (b) rms input current Irms , (c) electrical input
power Pin , and (d) relative difference between measured and set rotational speed ∆n.
Fig. 15. Measured uEMF for two different speeds as a function of the rotor
position, with indicated optimal switching angles.
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Transactions on Industry Applications
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0093-9994 (c) 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TIA.2018.2850017, IEEE
Transactions on Industry Applications
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