IPASJ International Journal of Electrical Engineering (IIJEE)

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ISSN 2321-600X

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Volume 4, Issue 12, December 2016

Optimal PID Control of a BLDC Motor Using

TLBO Algorithm
A. Sri Priyanka1, A .V. Naresh Babu2 , A. Bala Naga Lingaiah3
1

PG Student [P.E], Dept. of EEE, DVR & Dr. HS MIC College of Technology, Andhra Pradesh, India
2

Professor, Dept. of EEE, DVR & Dr. HS MIC College of Technology, Andhra Pradesh, India

Assistant Professor, Dept. of EEE, DVR & Dr. HS MIC College of Technology, Andhra Pradesh, India

ABSTRACT
Due to the increasing gain in importance of the BLDC motor in industrial and home appliances made its effective
control much important to meet the requirements of efficient performance. The PID controller finds its applicability
in industries and control of different plants for which its parameters are to be tuned effectively. This paper presents
TLBO for determining the optimal parameters of a PID controller for controlling and improving performance of a
BLDC motor. TLBO algorithm is used to tune the PID Controller and obtain optimal parameters. TLBO is a
population based algorithm. It is inspired by the influence of the teaching by the teacher on the students in a class.
Due to its attractive characteristics and high efficiency TLBO has been successfully applied to many real world
optimization problems. The results obtained from TLBO based controller show significant improvement in
performance of BLDC than the existing methods.
Keywords: BLDC Motor, PID controller, Teaching Learning Based Optimization
1. INTRODUCTION
Brushless Direct Current motors attain an extremely significant place as electric drives are finding applications in wide
range of areas such as in automotives, industrial automation, medical, aerospace, computers, consumer and
instrumentation. Due to its high efficiency, reliability, low maintenance, compact size, high starting torque, noiseless
operation and long operating life BLDC motor is rapidly gaining popularity in recent years [1-3]. It has permanent
magnet as rotor, there is no excitation loss, simple construction is realized and operation is very reliable. BLDC motor
is having more advantages when compared to that of the conventional DC motor. The differences are absence of
brushes and commutator. The BLDC motor uses an electronic commutator due to this wear and tear problem which was
a drawback in conventional DC motor is avoided. The BLDC motor is inherently electronically controlled.PID
controller is the most commonly used for improving stability and improving overall performance of system. The
conventional PID control method uses trial and error method which is a difficult task [4-8].Now, the optimization
techniques are widely used in motor control system due to its simplicity. The term optimization is defined as either
maximizing or minimizing the tasks in order to obtain the best solution. Teaching Learning Based Optimization
technique is inspired by the nature of influence of a teacher on learners [9-10]. In comparison with other algorithms,
TLBO is a simple and robust technique involving only few computations. It is a population based algorithm consists of
two phases: teaching phase and learning phase.
2. PERMANENT MAGNET BRUSHLESS DC MOTOR MODELING
The BLDC motor is usually a 3-phase, 4-pole permanent magnet motor. The control parameters are designed from the
transfer function of the system [1].The equivalent circuit of the BLDC motor is similar to that of a conventional DC
motor and is shown in Fig 1.

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A Publisher for Research Motivation........

Volume 4, Issue 12, December 2016

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Email: editoriijee@ipasj.org
ISSN 2321-600X

Fig 1: Equivalent Circuit of BLDC Motor

The general transfer function of BLDC motor is given by

Kt
G(s)
2
LJs (LB RJ)s K t K b

(1)

Where,
= motor torque constant, J = moment of inertia, B = viscous friction constant,
R = resistance, L= inductance

= back emf constant,

The MATLAB (The Math Works, Natick, Massachusetts, USA) system identification toolbox is used to find the
transfer function of the motor and its drive circuit [4]. Fig 2 shows the structure of closed loop system with PID tuning
algorithms.
312.3S 1.7774e4
G c (S)
(2)
2
S 10.2S 54.32

Fig 2 : Structure of closed loop system with PID tuning algorithms

3. PID CONTROLLER
PID control is a control strategy that has been successfully used over many years. The PID controller has been widely
adopted as the control strategy in the production process. Basically, a proportional-plus-integral-plus-derivative (PID)
controller will improve the speed of the response, steady-state error and system stability. However, the setting of PID
parameters is related to the characters of system process. Thus, optimum PID parameters are needed to approach the
desired performance .Some of the reasons that have made PID control so popular in the academic and industry sectors
are its wide range of applicability, simplicity, robustness and near-optimal performance. The transfer function of PID
controller is given by

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Web Site: http://www.ipasj.org/IIJEE/IIJEE.htm
Email: editoriijee@ipasj.org
ISSN 2321-600X

A Publisher for Research Motivation........

Volume 4, Issue 12, December 2016

G(s) K P

Ki

KdS
(3)
S
Where K P = proportional gain, K = integral gain, K d = derivative gain
i
The optimum search of the controller parameters for speed control of BLDC motor is made according to the criteria of
performance index [8]. These criteria include WGAM2 (weighted goal attainment method 2), this has better
performance and less disadvantages than other indices. It is given by .

WGAM2
(1 e

is the weighting factor,

steady state error

).(M P e ss ) (e

is the rise time,

(4)
).(t s t r )

is the maximum overshoot,

is the settling time,

is the desired

4. TEACHING LEARNING BASED OPTIMIZATION ALGORITHM

TLBO is a population based algorithm gives global solution. TLBO population is a group of learners or a class of
learners. In TLBO algorithm, the population consists of different design variables [9]. Different design variables will be
analogous to different subjects offered to learners. Learners result is analogous to the fitness. The teacher is
considered as the best solution obtained. TLBO involves only two phases. They are Teaching phase and Learning
phase.
TEACHING PHASE

In this phase, a teacher tries to ameliorate the mean result of class in the subject taught by him/her based on level of
knowledge and skill he/she had in that particular subject.
Let M i be the mean, T be teacher at iteration i
i
T will try to move mean M i towards its own level, so new mean will be T designated as M new
i
i
The solution is obtained according to the difference between the existing and the new.
Difference Mean i ri (M new TF M i )
(5)
is random number in range of [0, 1], TF is a teaching factor that decides the value of mean to be changed.
The value of TF can be either 1 or 2, which is again a heuristic step and decided randomly with equal probability as
Where

TF round[1 rand(0,1){2 1}]

This difference modifies the existing solution according to the following expression
X new,i X old,i Differencemean i

(6)

(7)

X new,i New position of learner i, X old,i = Old position of learner i

LEARNING PHASE

In the course of time, a learner gains knowledge not only from the teacher but also may attain knowledge by interacting
randomly with other learners with the help of communication and discussions. If a leaner interacts with other learner
who has more knowledge than him or her, he/she tries to learn new things and tries to increase his/her knowledge. For
a class of n learners the learning phenomenon of this phase is expressed as follows.
For i=1:
Randomly select two learners X i andX j , where i
If f(X i ) f(X j )
X new,i X old,i ri (X i X j )
Else

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X new,i X old,i ri (X j X i )
End
End

(9)

ALGORITHM

The step-wise procedure for the implementation of TLBO is given in this section.
Step 1: Define the optimization problem and initialize the optimization parameters.
Step 2: Initialize the population
Generate a random population according to the population size and number of design variables.
For TLBO, the population size indicates the number of learners and the design variables indicate the
subjects (i.e. courses) offered.
Step 3: Teacher phase
Calculate the mean of the population and determine the best solution.
Step 4: Learner phase
Learners increase their knowledge with the help of their mutual interaction.
The mathematical expression is explained in learning phase.
Step 5: Termination criterion
Stop if the maximum generation number is achieved; otherwise repeat from Step 3.

5. SIMULATION RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

BLDC motor parameters are provided in the Table1. Parameters of the teaching learning based optimization algorithm
are given in the Table 2.The range of values for different parameters are also considered. Parameters like no. of
iterations, population size, no. of variables etc are considered and performance of the BLDC motor with TLBO
controller and results for conventional controller are given in Table 3.
Table 1: BLDC Motor Parameters
Parameters
Values
Speed
2000 rpm
Power
370 W
V
220 V
R
2.8750
L
8.5 mH
J
0.0008 kg.
B
0.0003 N.m.sec/rad
Kb
0.175 V.sec

Table 2: Algorithm Parameters

Parameters
No of iterations
Population size
No of variables

Values
200
5
3
Either 1 or 2
Range of [0,1]

Kp limits

0 to 2

Ki limits

0 to 4

limits

0 to 1

Table 3: Performance of the PID Controller

Rise time(sec)
Settling time(sec)

Conventional
Controller
0.0037
0.0237
7.7347e-04
0.2026
0.8768

TLBO
based
Controller
1.3519
3.9676
0.1016
0.0366
0.0638

Maximum overshoot%
Peak
Peak Time(sec)
Error

7.6117
1.0761
0.3800
4.1672

0
1
0.09
0.0125

Parameters
Kp
Ki

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Volume 4, Issue 12, December 2016

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Email: editoriijee@ipasj.org
ISSN 2321-600X

The optimum PID parameters are searched for the transfer function of the identified model obtained by equation (2)
w.r.t the criteria of performance indices WGAM2. The step response of motor for conventional controller is shown in
the Fig 3, the step responses of TLBO based controller is shown in Fig 4and the convergence graph of the TLBO
method is shown in the Fig 5.

Fig 3 Step response of conventional PID controller

Fig 4 Step response of TLBO based PID controller

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IPASJ International Journal of Electrical Engineering (IIJEE)

A Publisher for Research Motivation........

Volume 4, Issue 12, December 2016

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Email: editoriijee@ipasj.org
ISSN 2321-600X

Fig 5 Convergence Characteristics

From the Fig 3 and Fig 4, it can be observed that the settling time is reduced when PID controller is controlled by the
TLBO algorithm. The best convergence characteristics with TLBO algorithm plotted between iterations and error are
shown in Fig 4. The value of error is found to be reduced with the increase in no. of iterations; this shows the
performance of the TLBO algorithm. The values of rise time and peak time have proven that the usage of TLBO
algorithm provides best results. The optimum PID parameters are obtained using the TLBO algorithm.

6. CONCLUSION
In this paper, optimal PID controller is tuned and parameters were derived through TLBO algorithms. Simulation
results shows that the characteristics of PID controller according to the performance criteria index WGAM2 obtained
by using TLBO are more efficient than the results obtained without TLBO. In this method, the system provides reduced
settling time, overshoot, rise time and error. The convergence characteristic of TLBO shows a reduction in the error
value. The proposed technique can have an efficient search for the optimal PID controller parameters and this method
provided good speed control of BLDC motor.

REFERENCES
[1]. A. Kiruthika and A. Albert Rajan, Mathematical modelling and speed control of a sensored brushless DC motor
using intelligent controller, IEEE International Conference on Emerging trends in Computing, Communication
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[2]. Tony Mathew and Caroline Ann Sam, Modelling and closed loop control of BLDC motor using a single current
sensor, IJAREEIE, vol.2, no.6, pp.2525-2531, June 2013.
[3]. R.Akhila and S.Nikhil, A comparative study of sensor and sensor less control of four-switch inverter fed
permanent magnet brushless DC motor, IEEE International conference on power, signals, controls and
computations, Jan 2012.
[4]. Lennart Ljung, System identification toolbox 7.3: Users Guide, Math Works Inc., 2009.
[5]. Chen and Shih-Feng, Particle swarm optimization for PID controllers with robust testing, International
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[6]. Kh .Ang , G.Chong and Yun Li , PID control system analysis, design and technology ,IEEE Trans. control
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[7]. P.Cominos and N. Munro, Linear programming for optimum PID controller tuning, IEE Proceedings- Control
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[8]. Sangram Keshari Mallick and Mehetab Alam Khan, Study of the design and tuning methods of PID controller
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[9]. R.V. Rao, V.J. Savsani and D.P. Vakharia, Teaching-learning-based optimization: A novel optimization method
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[10]. Pooja Sharma and Rajeev Gupta, Tuning of PID controller for a linear BLDC motor using TLBO technique,
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