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I. INTRODUCTION
III. PROPOSED CONVERTER TOPOLOGY Fig. 8. Equivalent circuits of each machine phase when (a) the switch is on
and (b) when the diode is conducting.
The proposed converter with four controlled switches and
diodes is shown in Fig. 7. The front-end consists of a SEPIC
dc/dc converter comprised of inductors and , switch , is negligible. The maximum operating speed is then given by
intermediate capacitor , diode and output capacitor . where is the phase back-emf constant of
The modification from the usual SEPIC configuration is that the motor.
the diode is placed in the return path instead of in the posi- If the motor is operated beyond this speed, it would result in
tive rail. This is to block the flow of current through the phases negative torque spikes because of conduction during periods of
during the periods of negative back-emf. A, B, and C are the negative back-emf.
three machine windings, and the currents through them are con- The minimum voltage required is
trolled by turn-on and turn-off of the switches , and , where and are the phase resistance and in-
respectively. Since there is only one switch per phase, the cur- ductance, and I is the phase current. At low speeds, when the
rents through them are unidirectional. The diodes , and back-emf is low, the switching frequency of the phase switches
serve to freewheel the winding currents when the switches increases in order to regulate the phase current. The switching
are turned off during current regulation and phase commuta- frequency and hence the losses at low speeds can be minimized
tion.The output of the converter is used to energize the three by bucking the input voltage to lower levels at the output .
phases of the motor, and the voltage of capacitor is used to At higher speeds, the current regulator loses its ability to force
demagnetize the phases during turn-off and for current control. current into the phases especially during turn-on because of the
Each phase is energized by turning on the corresponding high back-emf voltage. The ability of the SEPIC front-end to
switch in series with it. The equivalent circuit of phase A when boost the available input voltage makes it possible to maintain
switch is turned on is shown in Fig. 8(a). To regulate the current-regulated operation of the drive at higher speeds. This
current, is turned off, which forces the turn-on of diode , feature makes the proposed topology particularly suitable for
and the flow of current through as shown in the equivalent low voltage dc applications such as automotive circuits. The
circuit of Fig. 8(b). This applies a voltage of across the key operating waveforms at low speeds and at
machine winding, enabling a fast decay of the phase current. high speeds are illustrated in Fig. 9(a) and (b),
For proper demagnetization of the phase after each conduction respectively.
interval and to prevent conduction during periods of negative The front-end SEPIC converter can be designed for operation
back-emf, the instantaneous value of should be greater either in the continuous conduction mode (CCM) or in the dis-
than the peak value of the back-emf E, or continuous conduction mode (DCM). In CCM, its voltage con-
(1) version ratio is given by
V. DESIGN EXAMPLE
(b)
A commercially available fractional horsepower BLDC
Fig. 9. Phase A current (Trace 1), dc bus voltage (Trace 2) and intermediate
capacitor voltage (Trace 3): at (a) low speed and (b) high speed. motor with a phase back-emf constant of 12 V/Krpm is used in
the design example. Because of the low back-emf constant, the
input voltage is chosen to be 50 V peak. A drive with a power
rating of 100 W is designed.
The converter operates in CCM when and in DCM The following equations are used for the design [9].
when . In both modes of operation, can be reg- Input voltage .
ulated at a value higher (Boost operation) or lower (Buck oper- DC bus voltage .
ation) than the input voltage . From the controls viewpoint, Switching frequency of , .
it is advantageous to have the converter operating in the same Voltage conversion ratio .
mode under all load conditions. In addition, the size of the in- Critical conduction parameter
ductors and hence the overall converter can be reduced if it is .
operated in DCM [12]. Hence it is proposed that the converter is chosen to ensure DCM operation.
be designed for operation in the critical conduction mode at Duty cycle of , .
maximum load, so that it operates in DCM at rated load and Equivalent inductance .
all values less than rated load. Input current ripple .
.
IV. AC SUPPLY OPERATION .
For applications requiring operation from an ac supply, it is .
desired to obtain improved power factor by using the proposed The actual value of should be higher to minimize the voltage
topology as shown in Fig. 10. By operating the SEPIC front-end ripple caused by the freewheeling phase currents and is deter-
in DCM, the following desirable characteristics are obtained mined by simulation to be 10 .
GOPALARATHNAM AND TOLIYAT: NEW TOPOLOGY FOR UNIPOLAR BRUSHLESS DC MOTOR DRIVE 1401
Fig. 11. Operation with resistive load: (a) input voltage and current and (b) input, intermediate capacitor, and output voltages.
Fig. 15. (a) Input voltage and current waveforms, (b) input, output, and intermediate capacitor voltages, and (c) phase currents.
evaluation module board from Texas Instruments. It has two The experimentally measured harmonics of the input current
built-in analog to digital converters (ADCs) with eight multi- are given in Table I. They are expressed as a percentage of
plexed channels each that are used for converting the analog sig- the fundamental current so that the data is independent of the
nals from the current and voltage sensors into the digital values line voltage magnitude. The corresponding total harmonic dis-
required by the DSP. Hall-effect based current transducers are tortion (THD) and power factor data are tabulated in Table II.
used for the phase current sensing, and an isolation amplifier is The performance improvement achieved by using the proposed
used to sense the output voltage. The inbuilt PWM outputs of topology is evident. A high power factor is also achieved over
the DSP are used to derive the gate signals for the MOSFETs the entire speed range.
used in the power converter. Opto-isolators are used to interface
the PWM outputs with the MOSFET gates. The commutation VII. CONCLUSION
sequence, current, voltage and speed control loops are imple-
mented in DSP software. A new converter topology based on a SEPIC converter op-
A PI controller ( and ) is used to com- erating in DCM has been proposed for unipolar excitation of
pare the reference and actual speed and generate the current ref- brushless dc motors. The proposed scheme has the following
erence. The resulting speed response is shown in Fig. 13, and advantages.
the speed response to a step change in load torque in Fig. 14. 1) The proposed converter uses only four controlled
The input current plotted in Fig. 15(a) is seen to follow the input switches, all of which are referenced to ground. This
voltage waveform. Fig. 15(b) shows the intermediate capacitor considerably simplifies their gate drive circuitry and
voltage waveform. In an ideal PFP, this would go to zero in results in low cost and compact packaging.
each half-cycle of the input voltage, but in this case, its min- 2) It is capable of bucking or boosting the available input
imum value is limited to the peak phase back-emf. This results dc voltage to maximize the current-regulated operation of
in some distortion of the input current around the zero-crossing the drive.
of the input voltage. The phase currents at 500 rpm are shown 3) The input current naturally follows the input voltage to
in Fig. 15(c). a certain extent, reducing the amount of low-order har-
The experimentally obtained waveforms are shown in monics and resulting in a high power factor.
Fig. 16. The unipolar operation of the motor is shown by the 4) Eliminates the possibility of shoot-through faults which
current waveform of Fig. 16(a), which also shows the output could occur in bipolar converters.
voltage. The intermediate capacitor voltage waveform is shown 5) Lower conduction and switching losses because of the
in Fig. 16(b). As seen from Fig. 16(c), the input current follows presence of only one switch and diode per phase as op-
the input voltage waveform except around the zero-crossings. posed to two in the bipolar case.
GOPALARATHNAM AND TOLIYAT: NEW TOPOLOGY FOR UNIPOLAR BRUSHLESS DC MOTOR DRIVE 1403
(a) (b)
(c)
Fig. 16. (a) Phase current (Trace 1) and output voltage (Trace 2), (b) input voltage (Trace 2) and Intermediate capacitor voltage (Trace 3), and (c) input voltage
(Trace 2) and input current (Trace 1).
TABLE I TABLE II
COMPARISON OF INPUT CURRENT HARMONICS AS A COMPARISON OF THD AND POWER FACTOR
PERCENTAGE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL
[6] J. Sebastin, M. Jaureguizar, and J. Uceda, An overview of power factor Hamid A. Toliyat (S87M91SM96) received the
correction in single-phase off-line power supply systems, in Proc. IEEE B.S, degree from Sharif University of Technology,
IECON94 Conf., vol. 3, 1994, pp. 16881693. Tehran, Iran, in 1982, the M.S. degree from West Vir-
[7] J. Skinner and T. A. Lipo, Input current shaping in Brushless dc motor ginia University, Morgantown, in 1986, and the Ph.D.
drives utilizing inverter current control, in Proc. 5th Intl. Conf. Elect. degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in
Mach. Drives, 1991, pp. 121125. 1991, all in electrical engineering.
[8] R. P. Massey and E. C. Snyder, High voltage single-ended dc-dc con- Following receipt of the Ph.D. degree, he joined
verter, in Proc. IEEE PESC77 Conf., 1977, pp. 156159. the Faculty of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad,
[9] D. S. L. Simonetti, J. Sebastin, and J. Uceda, The discontinuous con- Mashhad, Iran, as an Assistant Professor of elec-
duction mode SEPIC and Cuk power factor preregulators: analysis and trical engineering. In March 1994, he joined the
design, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 44, pp. 630637, Oct. 1997. Department of Electrical Engineering, Texas A&M
[10] T. Gopalarathnam, S. Waikar, H. A. Toliyat, M. S. Arefeen, and J. C. University, where he is currently a Professor. His main research interests
Moreira, Development of low-cost multi-phase Brushless dc (BLDC) and experience include multi-phase variable speed drives for traction and
motors with unipolar current excitations, in Proc. IEEE IAS Annu. propulsion applications, fault diagnosis of electric machinery, analysis and
Meeting, Oct. 1999, pp. 173179. design of electrical machines, and sensorless variable speed drives. He has
[11] J. Sebastin, J. Uceda, J. A. Cobos, J. Arau, and F. Aldana, Improving published over 190 technical papers in these fields.
power factor correction in distributed power supply systems using PWM Dr. Toliyat received the Texas A&M Select Young Investigator Award in
and ZCS-QR SEPIC topologies, in Proc. IEEE PESC91 Conf., 1991, 1999, the Eugene Webb Faculty Fellow Award in 2000, the Space Act Award
pp. 780791. from NASA in 1999, the Schlumberger Foundation Technical Awards, in 2000
[12] F. S. Dos Reis, F. Antunes, J. Sebastin, and J. Uceda, Influence of the and 2001, and the 1996 IEEE Power Engineering Society Prize Paper Award. He
control method in the PFP converter size, in Proc. ISIE97 Conf., 1997, is a member of Sigma Xi and an Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ENERGY
pp. 365370. CONVERSION. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Electric Machines
and Power Systems Journal. He is also Vice-Chairman of IEEE-IAS Electric
Machines Committee.
Tilak Gopalarathnam (M02) received the B.Tech.
degree in electronics and communications engi-
neering from the Indian Institute of Technology,
Madras, in 1996, the M.Tech. degree in electronics
design and technology from the Indian Institute of
Science, in 1998, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical
engineering from Texas A&M University, College
Station, in 2002.
He was an Intern with Delphi Automotive Systems
during the summer of 2000, and with ABB Industrie
AG during Summer 2001. He is currently with Powell
Power Electronics Co., Inc. His research interests include permanent magnet
motor drives, traction power systems, and power electronic applications in re-
newable energy systems.