A drive system of the electrical lighter vehicle with the brushless DC machine is developed in the thesis. The system consists of a control unit based on a digital signal processor (DSP) and a drive module which combines a drive circuit, a brushless DC machine, and associated wheels. The motive power is delivered directly to the wheels without a power transmission system. The driving comments and the monitored signals between the modules and the control unit are communicated by the Controller Area Network (CAN) Bus. Each module can be controlled independently. By modifying the software of the system, the proposed drive system can be implemented in various electrical vehicles without changing circuit design. The developed system can be operated at forward, backward, and rotating motions. By limiting the armature current, the vehicle can be operated under the power saving mode. During the regenerative braking, the battery set is charged by the regenerative current. The experimental results show that the highest efficiency of the machine is 80 % with the motoring operation.

This thesis is about the improved design of small size brushless DC fan motor driving circuit. Two main improvements in the new design are increase the stability and decrease the size of motor fan at the same time. To improve the stability, there are two major parts added to the original driving circuit. The delay circuit that protects the H-bridge and the output low current limit circuit. Furthermore, it is believed that the speed control also can improve the stability. With regard to the rotation speed control, two circuits are attached to the motor, 1) speed feedback controller and 2) speed and current feedback controller. Both controllers are attached in the close loop rotation speed control circuit. They are used to increase the efficiency of drive circuit. In order to make the circuit more efficient, they solve problems such as disturbance in miscellaneous noise; also the power dissipation that occurs in open loop rotation speed control circuit. The second improvement in the new design is to reduce the cost and size of system. The design of sensorless control scheme is proposed to replace the Hall sensor to detect rotor position. This sensorless scheme can also supply fan motor voltage to achieve the speed control.

A high temperature magnetic bearing system using high temperature permanent magnets from Electron Energy Corporation (EEC) is under development. The system consists of two radial bearings, one thrust bearing, two radial catcher bearings and one motor. The purpose of this research is to develop one of the critical components of the system, namely, the High Temperature Permanent Magnet motor. A novel High Temperature Permanent Magnet (HTPM) Brushless DC(BLDC) motor capable of operating at 1000 degrees F (538 degrees C) is designed. HTPMs developed at Electron Energy Corporation are buried into the rotor. The high temperature motor is designed to produce 5.1kw of power at a top running speed of 20000 rpm. The numerical values of the motor voltage, power and torque output are predicted from calculations of the nonlinear finite element model of the motor. The motor stator is wound, potted, cured and high potential tested at 1000 degrees F. A servo amplifier from Advanced Motion Control is used to drive the high temperature motor. High temperature displacement sensors are set up for sensing the rotor position to form a closed loop motion control. However, the noise problem of the high temperature sensors causes a failure of this approach. An open loop approach is then developed and this approach succeeds in spinning the rotor with the capability of self-starting. The status of the full system assembling is introduced. Some other components of the system are briefly presented.

In this thesis, position and current control systems for a brushless DC (Direct Current) motor are designed and integrated into one FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) chip. Experimental results are obtained by driving the brushless DC motors of Control Actuation System of a guided missile. Because of their high performance, brushless DC motors are widely used in Control Actuation Systems of guided missiles. In order to control the motor torque, current controller is designed and implemented in the FPGA. Position controller is designed to fulfill the position commands. A soft processor in the FPGA is used to connect and configure the current controller, position sensor interfaces and communication modules such as UART (Universal Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter) and Spacewire. In addition / position controller is implemented in the soft processor in the FPGA. An FPGA based electronic board is designed and manufactured to implement control algorithms, power converter circuitry and to perform other tasks such as communication with PC (Personal Computer). In order to monitor the behavior of the controllers in real time and to achieve performance tests, a graphical user interface is provided.

The design of this thesis intends to present that 120¢X Communication and Flux-Weakening Control techniques can be successfully applied to a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) together with the hardware structure of an inverter. Experimental results are shown that utilizing IPM Motor as Drive Motor of Electric Vehicle, 120¢X Communication techniques can reduce ripple torque and maintain the stability of output torque. Furthermore, through Phase advanced control motor, it enables a higher output torque during the mid-lower speed. Using Flux-Weakening Control helps motor from higher output speed to the highest output speed. Moreover, the security of motor driver can be enhanced by designing circuit, which prevents over voltage. The function of motor driver will be better due to the decreased hardware size and increased accuracy that are the advantage of writing DSP scripts to analyze rotor speed.

The aim of this work is to reduce the cost and size of a brushless dc motor (BLDC) drive as well as increase the reliability and ruggedness of that drive. Traditional BLDC drives use Voltage Source Inverters (VSI) that utilize hard switching, thereby generating switching losses and entail the use of large heatsinks. VSI needs a huge dc link capacitor that is inherently unreliable and is one of the most expensive components of a drive. Hence, a Current Source Inverter (CSI) is used to replace the hard switchings by natural turn-off, thereby eliminating the heatsinks as well as the large dc link capacitor. A controlled rectifier together with a large inductor act as the current source. The only disadvantage is the large value of the dc link inductor and the huge number of turns needed to achieve these values of the inductances lead to huge resistive losses. Therefore, it is shown that it is possible to replace the controlled rectifier and the large inductor with a suitable dc-dc converter based current source switching at high frequencies and a much smaller value of the dc link inductor. Switching at high frequencies makes it possible to reduce the value of the dc link inductor without increasing the current ripple. Hence, it is possible to have the advantages of using a CSI as well as reduce the value of the dc link inductor without a corresponding increase in the heat sink and snubber requirements.

The design and implementation of the digital signal processing (DSP) based on a brushless DC (BLDC) motor sensorless driver with Sine PWM. Because of dispensable power consumption problems generated by closed-loop speed control methods with speed estimation signal feedback are adopted for improvement. In addition, current feedback is added to the driver for the sake of increasing efficiency. Then, sine wave closes 30¢X, 15¢X, and 8¢X to comparing the improvements for efficiency. Experimental results from a laboratory prototype are shown to verify the feasibility of the proposed scheme. The laboratory results show that current feedback and sine wave closed 8¢X have high efficiency.

Hydropower has been around for more than a century and is considered a mature technology, but with recent advancements in power electronics and simulation capability new exciting ways to increase efficiency and reliability is possible. At Uppsala University a brushless exciter has been constructed for the experimental test rig, SVANTE. Power electronics are mounted on the shaft for control of the generator's excitation current. In addition a wireless control and measurement system is needed to provide the desired switching patterns to the power electronics and to evaluate performance of the system. In this thesis a shaft mounted embedded system for control and measurement is constructed as well as magnetic field sensors with measurement range up to 700mT. The computational power comes from a National Instruments sbRIO-9606. The system has 14 individual totem pole power electronics driving channels, 48 analog input channels for current signals and it communicates wirelessly through a bluetooth connection. The system is tested and works satisfactory but has not been mounted on the rotating side of the generator due to delays in the manufacturing.

published_or_final_version / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Gato del Sol III, was powered by a solar array of 480 Silicon mono-crystalline photovoltaic cells. Maximum Power Point trackers efficiently made use of these cells and tracked the optimal load. The cells were mounted on a fiber glass and foam core composite shell. The shell rides on a lightweight aluminum space frame chassis, which is powered by a 95% efficient brushless DC motor. Gato del Sol IV was the University of Kentucky Solar Car Team’s (UKSCT) entry into the American Solar Car Challenge (ASC) 2010 event. The car makes use of 310 high density lithium-polymer batteries to account for a 5 kWh pack, enough to travel over 75 miles at 40 mph without power generated by the array. An in-house battery protection system and charge balancing system ensure safe and efficient use of the batteries. Various electrical sub-systems on the car communicate among each other via Controller Area Network (CAN). This real time data is then transmitted to an external computer via RF communication for data collection.