2009 Fourth International Conference on Innovative Computing, Information and Control

Modified Sliding Mode Speed Control of Brushless DC Motor Using Quantized

Current Regulator

Cheng-Yi Chen1,*, Marvin H.-M. Cheng2, and Cheng-Fu Yang3

Department of Electrical Engineering
1,*
Cheng Shiu University, No.840, Cheng-Ching Rd., Niaosong Township, Kaohsiung, 83347 Taiwan
2
School of Science and Technology
Georgia Southern University, PO Box 8045, Statesboro, GA 30460, USA
Email: hmcheng@georgiasouthern.edu
3
Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering
National University of Kaohsiung, 700, Kaohsiung University Rd., Nanzih District, 811. Kaohsiung, Taiwan
Email: cfyang@nuk.edu.tw

Abstract------This paper proposes a cascade control strategy,
combined of a modified sliding mode controller and a
quantized current regulator, for a Brushless DC Motor
(BLDCM) to achieve high-performance speed control. In the
current control loop, the quantized control law is derived by
minimizing the instantaneous square value of a performance
index signal using the theory of variable structure control to
perform a fast current control. Then, a modified sliding-mode
controller (SMC) with time-delay estimation is presented in its
outer control loop to enhance the speed control without the
need for the identification of system parameters or the
estimation of the bounds of disturbances. Simulation results
demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme under
the influence of system uncertainties and disturbances.
Keywords------sliding-mode control; Brushless DC Motor;
quantized control; Hybrid control
I. INTRODUCTION
Recently, DC motors have been gradually replaced by
the BLDC Motor since the industrial applications require
more powerful actuators in small size. BLDC motors use
Hall Effect sensors in place of mechanical commutations
and brushes, to eliminate the disadvantages of the DC
motors, such as maintenance, reliability problem, limitation
in speed and power rating, and so on. However, due to
electronic commutators used, BLDC motor usually
demands an advanced control algorithm in driving
application [1-2]. Basically, BLDC drives are used in two-
phase conducting circuit (120 voltage-source conduction)
to simulate the driving of DC motor. The pulse-width-
modulated (PWM) controllers are generally applied to
produce the switching logics for the inverters to enforce the
stator phase currents closely to the reference current
command [1-4]. Then, the speed controllers are adopted to
generate the reference current command to achieve the
high-performance speed control. Although PWM provides
the simple applications for the current regulator, its output
waveforms usually contain carrier frequency-related
harmonics tones with modulating frequency-related
sideband, which may seriously degrade the performance. In
order to eliminate the modulation noise within the control
bandwidth, the sliding-mode quantized controls [5] based
on Lyapunov stability analysis are commonly applied in the
switching power drive or converters to enhance the
performance of the inherent switching device. Due to the
inherent switching characteristic within motor power stage,
sliding-mode control (SMC) has obtained a lot of
attractions in the applications of the speed and position
control for motor drive because it can offer many good
properties such as insensitivity to parameter variations,
external disturbance rejection, and fast dynamic response
[6-8]. However, when the system uncertainties cannot be
easily predetermined, the controller design of SMC can not
be derived due to some limitations. Time delay control
(TDC)[9] utilizes the recent past observations of the system
states and the control input to directly determine its current
control action so that the unknown dynamics and
unexpected disturbances of the controlled system could be
quickly estimated. Therefore, using an SMC with TDC [10,
11] will be an effective method in solving disturbances with
unknown dynamics.
This paper presents a cascade control strategy, comprised
of a current regulator and a robust speed control, to achieve
the high-performance speed control of BLDC motor drive.
Firstly, the quantized current regulator in inner control loop
is designed to quickly trace the instantaneous current
command and not to excite the modulation noise within the
system bandwidth. Then, without considering system
unknown dynamic in advance, an integrated robust control
of SMC and time delay estimation is proposed to enhance
the system performance under the influence of load
disturbances and parameter uncertainties. Since unknown
system dynamics are estimated by using the TDC approach,
the switching gain of the modified SMC can be designed as
a smaller value which can reduce the chattering
phenomenon that usually occurs in the system, compared
with a conventional SMC. Finally, the effectiveness of the
proposed control scheme under load disturbance and
parameter uncertainties will be validated by simulation
results.

978-0-7695-3873-0/09 $29.00 2009 IEEE 926

 II. DYNAMIC MODEL DESCRIPTIONS quantized current control is chosen as the frequency-
A permanent-magnet brushless motor with three weighted sum of error y-r and the quantized control u, as
symmetric phase circuit as well as trapezoidal flux below.
distribution is considered in this paper. In general, 120 S = E = W1 (Y R) + W2U (6)
voltage-source power is applied in the inverter stage such
that there is only one current conduction path existed for where E, Y, R and U are the Laplace transform of e, y, r and
each switching operation. Therefore, the dynamic u, respectively. Substituting the plants dynamics Y=PU
characteristics of BLDC motor are similar to the permanent into (6) yields
magnet DC motor and its dynamics equations can be
S = E = W1 PU + W2U W1 R = (W1 P + W2 )U W1 R (7)
described as below [1]
dii Therefore, the weighting function designs of W1 and W2 are
Li + Rii (t ) + ei = Vi (1) the key issue for obtaining an appropriate performance-
dt index signal. If they are selected such that |W1P|  |W2|, (7)
ei = Kb (2) can be re-written as
E W1 PU W1 R = W1 (Y R) (8)
Te (t ) = Kt ii (t ) (3)
If W1 is designed as the low-pass filter, then W1-1 will be the
d (t ) high-pass filter such that the quantized tracking error will
J + B (t ) + TL = Te (t ) (4)
dt be enforced into the higher pass-band from lower pass-band.
where Vi(t), ii(t), and Ti(t) are, respectively, the applied However, when the plant output y is nearly equal to
voltage and stator current, and generated torque for each reference signal r, then the quantized tracking error can be
phase circuit; Li, Ri, and ei are 2 times of stator inductance, described as below:
resistance and instantaneous induced EMF for phase a, b, c,
respectively; Kt is the torque constant; Kb denotes the back S = E W2U (9)
EMF constant; J, B, TL and m is the moment of inertia, Hence, the design of weighting function W2 is basically to
friction coefficient, load torque, speed of the motor, suppress the control input u. The design procedure is based
respectively. In addition, the relations between the on the sliding mode approach. Firstly, a sliding surface is
electrical rotor r and mechanical speed m can be defined as the following form
described as
si = e1 + e2 (10)
r = ( P2 )m . (5)
where e1 and e2 is, respectively, the output signal of
where P is the number of motor poles. It is noted that the weighting function of W1 and W2 in state space model
phase-voltage equation is identical to the armature-voltage presentations, as below:
equation of a DC motor.
x = A1 x1 + B1 (r y ) x2 = A2 x2 + B2ui
III. HYBRID CONTROLLER DESIGN W1 = 1 , W2 =
e1 = C1 x1 e2 = C2 x2 .
This paper adopts two stages control schematic to
achieve the high-performance speed control, as shown in Then, taking the derivative of the sliding surface with
Fig. 1. The current command is accomplished by the inner respect to time yields
loop current controller and then the speed command is
si =C1 A1 x1 + C1 B1 y C1 B1r + C2 A2 x2 + C2 B2 ui
reached by the outer loop speed controller. The detailed (11)
controller design is described in the following subsection. = k 1 (ui z (t ))

where k=(C2B2)-1>0, and

z (t ) = K (C1 A1 x1 + C1 B1 y C1 B1r + C2 A2 x2 )

It means that the current trajectory tracking will be onto the

sliding surface si(t)=0. For robust controller design, a
quantized control law satisfying the hitting condition as
Fig. 1 The control block diagram of the proposed controller for BLDCM
umin , s > 0
A. Quantized Current Regulator u = Q ( z (t )) = (12)
umax , otherwise,
The quantized control [4] is applied in the inner current
loop (see Fig. 1). The performance-index signal of the

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with umin < z (t ) < umax and s = (u z ) / k . umin and umax is
the predefined value of the switching control according to
practical application. Let us consider the Lyapunov
function candidate for the current control as Vi=0.5si2 and
take its time derivative as:
Vi = si si = si [(u z ) / k ] . (13)
According to Eq. (12), the quantized control law guarantees
Vi = si si < 0, when s 0 . (14)
When Vi is clearly positive definite and its time derivative
is negative definite, si(t) will asymptotically converges to
zero; i.e., si(t)0 as t.
B. Robust speed controller design
After the quantized current controller has been applied in
the inner-loop, the equivalent electro-mechanical dynamic
equations for each switching can be considered as below
 m = Bmm TL + K I I , (15)
where Bm=B/J; KI=Ke/J; and TL=Tl/J. Considering load
disturbance and parameter uncertainties, the previous
equation can be expressed as:
  
 m = [ Bmm TL + (b b )u ] + bu = f (t ) + bu (16)

where u=I, b is the known nominal control gain and f(t)
represents the systems unknown dynamics.
Define the speed tracking error to be the difference
between the speed of the desired trajectory d and the
motor speed m; i.e., e= dm. Accordingly, the sliding
surface of SMC is chosen as the representation of integral
form
t J=6.5105Kgm2, Ke=0.03Vs/ rad , B=5106 kgms/rad.
s (t ) = e (t ) +
K e ( )d = 0 ,
0
(17)
where K is the positive design parameter. Accordingly,
taking the derivative of the above sliding surface with
respect to time yields
 response. Figure 2(b) also shows that the speed tracking
s = e + K e =  d f (t ) bu + K e (18)
Then, the best approximation equivalent control input can
be expressed as:
 external load disturbance of 0.03 Nm is suddenly injected
ueq = b 1[ d f (t ) + K e ] . (19)
However, the above control law still involves the
uncertainty term. By using time delay estimation, the
unknown function, f(t), can be approximated to the past
function f(t-L) for a small time delay L and expressed as
 by noise transfer function S. Furthermore, Fig 4(e) shows
f (t ) f (t L) =  (t L) bu (t L) (20)
When the time delay is small, the value of f(t) and f(t-L)
can be assumed to be very close and the difference between
them is bounded by
f (t ) f (t L) (21)
Moreover, consider a control law satisfying the hitting
condition as
 
u = u + b 1 sgn( s) (22)
where
 
u = u (t L) + b 1[ d + K e  (t L)]
Let us consider the Lyapunov function candidate for the
speed control as V=0.5s2 and take its time derivative as:
V (e, t ) [ f (t ) f (t L) ] s s , (23)
if is chosen to satisfy the following equation
+ (24)
According to Lyapunov theory, it confirms that s(t)
asymptotically converges to zero; i.e., s (t ) 0 as t .
Finally, the control law is designed as below

u = u (t L) + b 1[ d + K e  (t L) + sgn( s)] , (25)
where L is assumed to be one sampling interval.
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS
The controller parameters of the proposed modified SMC
is designed as K=30 and =1, for Considering BLDC90 of
40W (TECO Electro Devices Co., Ltd.) with its parameters
given as below: VDC=24V, Rs=0.1 , Ls=0.5mH,
Figure 2 demonstrates the simulation results for speed
control of 1400 rpm with external load disturbance 0.03
Nm added at t = 1.5 sec, for ramp speed trajectory. It can
be observed that the proposed controller can provide a
smooth and stable speed response without the overshoot
error can be depressed within 0.1 RPM. Figure 2(c)
demonstrates the current command generated from the
modified sliding mode controller. In addition, when
at t=0.15 sec, it is also found that the proposed controller
can maintains the desired speed tracking performance by
means of quickly compensating for system disturbance.
Figure 2(d) depicts the modulator output spectrum of the
quantized current regulator, and it confirms that the
unwanted in-band harmonic tones and noise are attenuated
that the current waveforms for each phase circuit, which is
just like the demanded current waveform in six-step
operation.
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Fig. 2 Speed control of 1400 rpm with load disturbance 0.03 N-m at 0.15s,
(a) Speed response, (b) speed tracking error, (c) current command, (d)
modulator output spectrum of quantized current regulator, (e) Phase
current response.
Fig. 3 Speed control of 30 rpm with 10% variation of system parameters of
J and B, (a) speed tracking error, (b) current command.
Besides, Fig. 3 shows the speed error and current
command response for a low speed control of 30 rpm with
20% parameter variation of J and B. It can be found that the
performance of the proposed controller is similar to that at
high speed command. Moreover, the proposed modified
SMC approach can significantly attenuates the torque ripple
effect.
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V. CONCLUSIONS
This paper proposes a hybrid control scheme, which is
combination of modified sliding mode controller and a
quantized current regulator, to achieve high-performance
speed control of a BLDC drive. Simulation studies
demonstrated that the proposed modified SMC controller
use the time delay estimation technique to enhance its
performance with respect to the system uncertainties. A
sliding mode quantized current regulator is adopted to
replace the role of the common used PWM current
regulator and guarantees the original performance with the
advantage of depressing the unwanted in-band harmonic
tones and noise to the high frequency region. Simulation
studies demonstrated that the proposed controller can
produce an encouraged speed response for different speed
commands, load disturbances, and parameter uncertainties.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the National Science
Council, Republic of China, for financial support of this
research under grant NSC97-2221-E-230-018.
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