DC SPEED CONTROL SYSTEM

1 OBJECTIVE
To study the performance characteristics of a d.c. motor speed control system.

2 EQUIPMENT DESCRIPTION
Speed control is a very common requirement in many industrial applications such as rolling
mills, spinning mills, paper factories, etc. The present unit is a low-power d.c. motor
speed control system designed as a laboratory experiment. The various components and
subsystems have been carefully integrated, and the experiments are designed to illustrate
the important performance characteristics in a simple way. Figure 1 shows a schematic of
the system, different blocks, and parts of which are described below.

1. D.C. Motor: The 12-volt permanent magnet d.c. motor used in the system has the
following specifications:

• Rated voltage: 12 volts d.c.

• Rated current: 200 mA at no load, 290 mA at full load
• Torque: 50 gm-cm
• Maximum speed: 3000 rpm

A slotted aluminum disk is mounted on the motor shaft which generates signals for
speed measurement. Also, an adjustable eddy current brake is provided to enable the
study of the effects of external disturbance on the system performance.

2. Speed Measurement: The slotted disk attached to the motor shaft generates 12
pulses for every revolution of the shaft through optical interruptions. After passing
through signal conditioning and frequency scaling circuits, these pulses are then fed to
a built-in frequency counter to display the shaft speed directly in rpm.

3. Tachogenerator: A d.c. signal proportional to the shaft speed is obtained from an

electronic tachogenerator - a frequency to voltage converter to a suitable level by signal
conditioning to yield a tacho constant of about 0.5 V/1000 rpm.

1
 4. Error Detector and Forward Gain: The speed signal obtained from the tachogen-
erator is compared with the reference (corresponding to a set speed) to obtain an error
signal. The error is amplified by a calibrated variable gain amplifier (0-100) and then
fed to the driver circuit.

5. Driver Circuit: The driver circuit is designed to deliver the necessary power to
operate a unity gain power amplifier and has all the necessary protection circuits for
the motor. It is number of IC regulated supplies feed the electronic

6. Power and Signal Sources: circuits, reference potentiometer, DVM, speed displays,
and the motor. Also, a square wave oscillator of 1 Hz (approx.) is included for time
constant studies.

7. DVM: A 19.99 Volt full-scale-deflection DVM mounted on the panel is available for
the measurement of various signals. One terminal of the DVM is internally connected
to ground.

3 BACKGROUND SUMMARY
A basic block diagram of the d.c. motor speed control system is shown in Fig. 2. In order
to evaluate the system performance, it is necessary to compute the overall transfer function
in terms of the transfer functions of the different blocks. To start with, the transfer function
of an armature-controlled d.c. motor of Fig. 3 may be derived as [1. page nos. 30-32],
KM
θ(s)/V (s) = (1)
s(sT + 1)
where Km is motor gain constant, and T is the mechanical time constant. Note that a
permanent magnet d.c. motor should behave similar to a shunt motor with constant field
excitation. Considering motor speed ω rad/sec (=dθ/dt) as the output variable, the forward
path transfer function may be written as,

ω(s) KM
G(s) = = KA (2)
VE (s) s(sT + 1)
which Ka is the gain of the amplifier. Again, the tachogenerator transfer function (or
gain) may be written as,

VT (s)
H(s) = = KT (3)
ω(s)
This yields the closed-loop transfer function of the complete system as

ω(s) KA KM
= (4)
VR (s) sT + KA KM KT + 1
In Eq. 4, the transfer function of the closed-loop system is seen to be a first-order type-0
function. Its transient and steady-state response to step input may be easily studied as
described below.

2
3.1 Steady State Error
Defining ’positional error coefficient,’ KP , as,

KP = lim G(s)H(s) = KA KM KT , (5)

s→0

the steady-state error, eSS , to step input R u(t), is given by,

R R
lim(VR − VT ) = lim(VR − VF ) = eSS = = (6)
s→0 s→0 1 + KP 1 + K A KM KT

• The steady-state error may be determined from a measurement of VR and VF .

• The steady-state error is expected to decrease as Ka is increased.