Getting a handle on brushed DC motor

current
Ross Eisenbeis, Systems Engineer, Texas Instruments - November 11, 2015

Systems that have controlled parameters and closed-loop feedback mechanisms are generally more
robust and less susceptible to failure. For example, vehicle engines regularly use temperature
sensors and tachometers to ensure that the operating conditions stay within the designed scope. If
temperature and engine speed werent controlled or even monitored, the design would need to be
significantly more robust and costly to be able to withstand the worst-imaginable scenarios.
Constraints allow designs to be more efficient.

With brushed DC motors, a prime example of a constraint that often is not capitalized is the
maximum allowed current. In many systems today, maximum current is unbounded, limited only by
the small DC resistance of the motor plus the RDS(on) of MOSFETs. Then fault-protection schemes are
the only line of defense for preventing component damage. As a result, power-delivery stages are
often overdesigned, temperatures can reach high levels, and predicting corner-case behavior can be
challenging.

Unbounded current

When motors are spinning, a back electromotive force (back EMF) develops on the winding. Directly
proportional to the RPM, back EMF counteracts the externally applied voltage across the motor
terminals. Steady-state current through a brushed DC motor equals the applied voltage minus the
back EMF, divided by the resistance of the winding (Equation 1):

When a motor is prevented from turning (stalls) while being electrically driven, there is no back
EMF, and the current will reach the full applied voltage divided by the resistance. This happens if
the load torque is greater than the motors stall torque, or if theres simply a jam that stops
movement.

The other situation that involves much higher current than normal operating levels is when a motor
begins to spin up. Initially the back EMF is zero, and the current rises as quickly as the motor
inductance allows. When the current peaks, the motor will be moving and some back EMF will be
present, so the peak will be lower than the stall current.

The waveforms in Figures 1 and 2 show measured current during spin-up, runtime and stall using a
Maxon Motor RE 30 310007 brushed DC motor.

Figure 1: Motor spin-up current

Figure 2: Motor stall current

With 24 V applied, the motor consumed 29 A during spin-up (700 W) for about 1 ms, while the
operational current was 2 A (48 W continuous). When the rotor was held and prevented from
moving, stall current was 34 A. This motor requires that continuous current be kept under 3.5 A to
prevent overheating and damage.

Whenever high amounts of current are involved, two primary consequences come to mind: supplyvoltage drop and heating.

Supply-voltage drop

Quick demands of current require capacitance to source the energy and maintain a stable voltage. A
power supply by itself has limited capacitance on the output, and interconnects to the motor system
will have inductance that limits response time. For these reasons, local bypass capacitance is
needed.

These silos of stored energy must be large enough to handle the biggest demands of a motor system.
If the motor consumes more charge than what the capacitor has stored and the power supply cant
replenish it fast enough, the motor voltage will drop. Once the voltage rail is unstable, a multitude of
bad things can happen: motor rotation will be disturbed, the controller circuitry might stop
functioning, and the MOSFETs can even become damaged due to partially on gate voltages that
cause high resistance and overheating. Therefore, one must size the bulk capacitance according to
the maximum possible current.
Heating

Heating

Most sub-100-V motor systems control speed by pulse-width modulating (PWM) the MOSFETs, with
a frequency between 0 to 100 kHz, and static power dissipation dominates power loss in the drive
stage. I2R calculates the dissipated power for each resistive component in the current path. Starting
from the power supply, the path typically includes a printed circuit board (PCB) trace, the RDS(on) of
the high-side MOSFET, the motor winding, the RDS(on) of the low-side MOSFET, an optional sense
resistor and finally a PCB trace back to the power supply.

Over time, the dissipated power generates heat. Since motor current exponentially increases this,
optimized systems should limit current to whats needed for adequately fast spin-up times and
driving the maximum load torque.

Closed-loop current regulation

Actively measuring and compensating motor current makes it easy to budget for the maximum
power draw and heat buildup. This produces more predictable system behavior and the potential for
big cost savings in a power design.

Perhaps the most commonly used architecture for closed-loop current regulation is shown in Figure
3. This places a low-value resistor in series with the motors ground path and amplifies the voltage
across it. That voltage is compared to a reference, and the comparator output disables the
MOSFETs.

Figure 3: Common closed-loop feedback circuit

The resistor must have a power rating of at least I2R, where I is the root-mean-square (RMS) current.
Lower resistances will obviously reduce the power dissipation, but also the usable voltage produced.
It is common practice to use multiple resistors in parallel to distribute current and heat, since they
are sometimes cheaper than a single high-power resistor.

Motor driver devices like the DRV8701 have an integrated feedback circuit and rely on an external
sense resistor and VREF input. The waveform in Figure 4 shows spin-up current using the same motor
that was used for Figures 1 and 2, with current regulation set to 14 A.

Figure 4: Motor spin-up using 14-A current regulation

Likewise, stall current is also favorably restricted (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Motor stall using 14-A current regulation

Why isnt current regulation always used?

There are plenty of benefits, and the implementation isnt terribly difficult. So why dont more
systems use current regulation? There are a variety of reasons:

Lack of awareness. Many systems use extra bulk capacitance and higher-current power supplies,
along with fault protection (such as a fuse) to catch the high-current scenarios. Brushed DC motors
dont require complex control, and crude designs will still work.

Small motors can have low stall currents of less than 0.5 A, so regulation isnt always important.

Using a high-power sense resistor and other components adds board area, power dissipation and
cost.

When a motor driver circuit is built with discrete components (rather than a monolithic integrated
circuit), incorporating an amplifier, comparator and logic adds extra complexity.

New technology

This year, Texas Instruments designed an innovative way to measure and regulate motor current
without a sense resistor or reference voltage, and integrated it in silicon. The first product to use
this advanced technology is the DRV8871, an 8-pin 3.6-A controller, and the current threshold is set
by the value of a standard resistor.

This efficient solution uses no extra board area; eliminates design effort; and avoids the power loss,
heat and cost associated with sense resistors. As this technology makes its way to future devices, it
may become an integral part of mainstream DC motor control.

References

Download these data sheets: DRV8701, DRV8871.