See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/215686649

Development of a BLDC motor drive with improved output characteristics

Article in PRZEGLĄD ELEKTROTECHNICZNY · January 2011

CITATIONS READS

6 8,782

4 authors:

Wael A. Salah Dahaman Ishak

Palestine Technical University- Kadoorie Universiti Sains Malaysia
78 PUBLICATIONS 628 CITATIONS 186 PUBLICATIONS 2,952 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Khaleel J. Hammadi Soib Taib

Al-Turath University College Universiti Sains Malaysia
16 PUBLICATIONS 86 CITATIONS 107 PUBLICATIONS 1,696 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Wael A. Salah on 04 June 2014.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Wael A. SALAH, Dahaman ISHAK, Khaleel J. HAMMADI, Soib TAIB
Universiti Sains Malaysia

Development of a BLDC motor drive with improved output

characteristics
Abstract. A brushless DC (BLDC) motor control based on rotor position sensing scheme is discussed in this paper. A PIC microcontroller is
employed to generate pulse width modulation (PWM) signals for driving the power inverter bridge. Parameters required for power PWM generations
have been programmed, which provide flexible and online source code modifications in accordance with the motor and circuit requirements.
Hardware implementation and simulation results show the effectiveness of the developed motor drive. The flexibility offered by the developed motor
control and drive enables the implementation of difference control algorithms for improving the output characteristics of the BLDC motor.

Streszczenie. W artykule przedstawiono sterowanie silnikiem bezszczotkowym DC bazujące na czujnikach pozycji wirnika. Mikrokontroler jest
wykorzystywany do wytwarzania sygnału PWM zasilającego przekształtnik. Parametry wymagane do generacji sygnału PWM są programowane w
zależności od wymagań silnika i napędu. Badania modelu i symulacje pokazują skuteczność zaproponowanej metody. (Napęd silnika
bezszczotkowego z ulepszoną charakterystyką wyjściową)

Keywords: BLDC, Motor Drive, Microcontroller, PWM.

Słowa kluczowe: silniki bezszczotkowe DC, .PWM, napęd.

Introduction of PWM-controlled and pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM)-

In conventional DC motors with brushes, the field controlled sensorless BLDC motor drives for refrigerator
winding is on the stator and armature winding is on the applications has been presented by Lai et al. [3]. For BLDC
rotor. The motor is expensive and needs maintenance motor drives, the inverter can be controlled through either
because of the brushes, the accumulation of the brush PWM with a fixed DC-link voltage or PAM with controlled
debris and dust, and commutator surface wear. Moreover, DC-link voltage amplitude. A novel microcontroller-based
in certain hazardous locations, the application of DC sensorless BLDC motor drive for automotive fuel pumps
brushed motors is limited because of the arcing. This could has been presented in Ref. [4]. The paper describes the
be solved by replacing the mechanical switching speed control of a BLDC motor drive that employs a hard-
components (commutator and brushes) with electronic chopping PWM technique using a digital signal processor.
semiconductor switches. Brushless DC (BLDC) motor has a According to the input command, feedback command, and
permanent magnet rotor and a wound field stator connected control algorithm, the PWM pulses for each phase
to a power electronic switching circuit. BLDC motor drives generated by the DSP are given to MOSFET/insulated gate
have high efficiency, low maintenance and long life, low bipolar transistor (IGBT) driver [5].
noise, control simplicity, low weight, and compact Yen-Shin et al. [6] presented a PWM technique for
construction. small-power BLDC motor drives that significantly reduces
BLDC control drive systems are based on the feedback conduction losses and heat dissipation. Comparative results
of rotor position obtained at fixed points typically every 60 using conventional PWM techniques have been fully
electrical degrees for six-step commutation of the phase explored to highlight the advantages of the proposed
currents [1]. technique [6]. A PWM technique with switching-loss
Brushless motors can be classified as either trapezoidal reduction for a five-leg inverter has been presented by Oka
or sinusoidal based on the shape of their back-EMF. In et al. [7]. The method advantages in the DC-bus voltage
BLDC motors with trapezoidal back-EMFs, the permanent can be fully available. Information on the motor frequency,
magnets produce a trapezoidal air gap flux density phase, and amplitude of phase voltage commands is not
distribution. These motors have higher torque and larger required in this PWM strategy [7].
torque ripples compared with motors that have sinusoidal- To switch the motor stator coils in the correct sequence
shaped back-EMF. They are also cheaper and used for and at the correct time, the position of the rotor field
general applications [2]. magnets must be known. The exact location of the rotor
The BLDC drive system consists of BLDC motor, power field magnets can be detected by Hall Effect sensors or by
electronics converter, sensor, and controller as shown in an encoder. In this paper, the position information fed to the
Fig. 1. controller will be implemented using Hall Effect sensors.
The function of the controller is to switch the right
currents in the right stator coils at the right time in the right
sequence using the information supplied by the sensor and
processing it with pre-programmed commands to make the
motor perform as desired. Embedded microcontrollers are a
widely used technology in many devices and systems;
nowadays, fewer electrical devices are controlled by means
of analogue. Instead, many devices and systems are
operated digitally using microcontrollers that can be
programmed to perform multiple tasks, which provides
Fig.1: BLDC drive system components easier and flexible control [8].
One of the popular microcontroller products suitable for
BLDC Motor Control such motor control applications is the 8-bit PIC18
The pulse width modulation (PWM)-controlled BLDC microcontroller from Microchip. This microcontroller unit
motor drive system is the most commonly applied technique (MCU) offers a moderate price/performance ratio with
for driving a motor inverter bridge. An effective comparison reliable and easy development technology [9].

258 PRZEGLĄD ELEKTROTECHNICZNY (Electrical Review), ISSN 0033-2097, R. 87 NR 3/2011

Implementation of drive control signal that is used as a reference for the PWM duty cycle
Digital controller systems are used extensively in the register.
field of motion control. High-performance digital control
systems usually require the fast execution of control
algorithms. These controllers, which are typically run at a
moderate clock frequency and use multiple instruction
cycles for each processing step, could provide a flexible
and fast motion control system [10].

Fig. 2: Block diagram of microcontroller system Fig. 3: System connection

The 8-bit microcontroller produced by Microchip The programming task is performed under the MPLAB
Technology Inc. that has special advanced motor control IDE environment with C18 compiler and ICD2 module. The
peripherals could deliver better efficiency, quieter operation, basic configuration of the PIC 18F4431, the initialization of
wide speed range, and extend the life of motors. This chip the PWM module, the ADC module for speed reference and
provides a complete solution for precise and energy- Hall sensors, and duty cycles of the power PWM are
efficient operation in sophisticated motor control presented. At any time, the stop button can be activated to
applications through advanced analogue and digital stop the machine and jump back to the beginning of the
feedback, and three-phase complimentary PWM modules. program. The flow of the program code for BLDC drive
A block diagram showing the digital signal controller based on the Hall Effect sensing of rotor position is shown
functionality is shown in Fig. 2 [11]. in Fig. 5.
The new IGBTs lead the market today for medium and As an interrupt routine for change notification of rotor
high power applications. IGBTs feature many desirable position by the Hall sensor, when a Hall sensor changes
properties including high switching speed, low conduction state, an interrupt pointer is generated in the ISR routine.
voltage drop, high current-carrying capability, and a high The program then reads the IC1, IC2, and IC3 inputs, which
degree of strength. The availability of IGBTs has lowered are then used to load a corresponding value from the state
the cost of systems and made its use economically viable in table, and sends the correct PWM output to energize the
many practical applications. A recommended switch driver IGBT switch.
from the IGBT manufacturer is used in this paper. The
online design tools provided by the manufacturers and the BLDC drive system model
customer support aids in the selection of a proper switch The BLDC motor produces a trapezoidal back-EMF and the
driver. The gate drive is needed to amplify gate signals applied current waveform is rectangular. The stator
generated by an embedded controller and to provide resistances of all the windings are assumed equal, and the
electrical isolation between the control circuit and the power self-inductance and mutual inductance are constant. The
circuit [12], [13]. three-phase voltage equations can be expressed as in
For a drive system with sensors, the Hall Effect position Equation (1) [15]. The rotor induced currents are neglected
sensors are used to determine the actual rotor position. The and the damper windings are not modelled in this equation.
Hall outputs are monitored by the controller, and an
va  RS 0 0 ia  LS  M 0 0  ia  ea 
appropriate commutation sequence is applied for d
(1)      
commutating the motor [14]. vb  0 RS 0 ib  0 LS  M 0  ib   eb 
       dt    
A block diagram showing the system connection is vc   0 0 RS 
illustrated in Fig. 3. A reference speed is given by the user, ic   0 0 LS  M ic  ec 
a popper PWM scheme is applied to the power switch Rs is the phase resistance, Ls is the self-inductance in L,
driver, and then the motor is connected to the output of the and M is the mutual inductance. The variables va, vb, and vc
power bridge. The feedback signals of the BLDC rotor are the phase voltages; ia, ib, and ic are the phase currents;
position are fed back using the assembled Hall Effect ea, eb, and ec are the phase back-EMF voltages.
sensors.
The speed of the motor is varied using PWM outputs on The equivalent circuit of the BLDC motor is shown Fig. 4.
the output voltages. The speed of the motor is directly
proportional to the applied voltage. By varying the average
voltage across the windings, the motor speed can be
changed. This is achieved by altering the duty cycle of the
base PWM signal. Maximum speed is achieved when the
PWM duty is 100%. In this case, the power switches are
ON for 100% of the commutation period. When PWM is less
than 100%, the speed is proportional to the duty cycle
setting. The speed reference is determined using a
potentiometer. Then this reference is converted to a digital Fig. 4: Brushless DC motor equivalent circuit

PRZEGLĄD ELEKTROTECHNICZNY (Electrical Review), ISSN 0033-2097, R. 87 NR 3/2011 259

Due to the interaction of the current in the stator windings from high to low or low to high at each 60; the conduction
and the magnetic field in rotor magnet, the electromagnetic of each sensor is 120 electrical.
torque is generated in the BLDC motor.
The electromagnetic torque is given by
(2) Te  ( ea ia  ebib  ec ic ) m
where m is the mechanical speed of the rotor. The
equation of motion is
d
(3) m  Te  TL  Bm  J
dt
where TL is the load torque, B is the damping constant,
and J is the moment of inertia of the rotor shaft and the
load [2].

Fig. 6: Simulation setup for the Hall-sensed BLDC drive

Fig. 7: Phase current waveforms

Experimental results
Fig. 8 shows the hardware implementations consisting
of a control board, a three-phase inverter board, and a
three-phase permanent magnet brushless motor.
The developed prototype three-phase inverter bridge
with the HV driver is connected to the MCU through opto-
coupler drivers to provide isolation between the power and
the control sides. The developed motor control offers Hall
sensor and/or encoder input ports for rotor position
feedback. Details regarding the experimental motor are
shown in Table 1.
As shown in Fig. 9 (lower waveform), the generated
PWM driving signal for the inverter bridge power switches
have been chopped to a train of pulses utilized by the PIC
microcontroller PWM module.

Fig. 5: Flowchart of sensor-controlled BLDC motor

Simulation results
Fig. 6 shows the setup configuration of the BLDC motor
simulation using the PSIM. The signals from the Hall
sensors are used to generate the proper commutation
sequence for the BLDC motor drive. Based on the output of
the built-in Hall sensors, the corresponding switch will be
energized in accordance to the six-step BLDC commutation
principle. There is one transition from high to low or low to
high at each 60; the conduction of each sensor is 120.
Fig. 7 shows the simulated phase currents of the BLDC
motor based on Hall sensor control. There is a transition
Fig. 8: Hardware implementations

260 PRZEGLĄD ELEKTROTECHNICZNY (Electrical Review), ISSN 0033-2097, R. 87 NR 3/2011

 The upper waveform in Fig. 9 shows the measured [3] Y. S. Lai, et al., "Efficiency comparison of PWM-controlled and
current of the BLDC motor; the shape of motor current is PAM-controlled sensorless BLDCM drives for refrigerator
matched with the current recorded in the simulation. The applications," in Conference Record - IAS Annual Meeting
(IEEE Industry Applications Society), 2007, pp. 268-273.
lower waveform shows the control PWM signal driving the
[4] S. Jianwen, et al., "A novel microcontroller-based sensorless
power switch. brushless DC (BLDC) motor drive for automotive fuel pumps,",
IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, vol. 39, pp. 1734-
1740, 2003.
[5] T. Hemanand and T. Rajesh, "Speed control of brushless DC
motor drive employing hard chopping PWM technique using
DSP," in India International Conference on Power Electronics,
IICPE 2006, 2006, pp. 393-396.
[6] L. Yen-Shin, et al., "Novel pulse-width modulation technique
with loss reduction for small power brushless DC motor drives,"
in Industry Applications Conference, 2002. 37th IAS Annual
Meeting, pp. 2057-2064, vol.3.
[7] K. Oka, et al., "A novel PWM technique with switching-loss
reduction in five-leg inverter for independent drives of two
three-phase AC motors," The IEEE Energy Conversion
Congress and Exposition, ECCE 2009, pp. 877-884.
[8] Microchip 2006 Product Line Card, [web: www.michrochip.com,
accessed 2009].
[9] K. Cheung, "Microchip Ranks First in 8-bit Microcontroller
Revenue," [web: http://edageek.com/2007/04/16/microchip-
gartner-dataquest/ ], accessed 2008.
[10] C. Rui Hong, et al., "Project-Based Lab Teaching for Power
(a) Speed: 1440 rpm Electronics and Drives", IEEE Transactions on Education, vol.
51, pp. 108-113, 2008.
[11] PIC18F2331/2431/4331/4431 Data Sheet," Microchip
Technology Inc., Data Sheet DS39616C, 2007.
[12] International Rectifier AN990, Application Characterization of
IGBTs, International Rectifier, http://www.irf.com.
[13] E. Mese, "Project-oriented adjustable speed motor drive
course for undergraduate curricula," IEEE Transactions on
Education, vol. 49, pp. 236-246, 2006.
[14] W. Brown, "Brushless DC Motor Control Made Easy,"
Application Note AN857, 9/12/2002 2002.
[15] P. Pillay and R. Krishnan, "Modeling, simulation, and analysis
of permanent-magnet motor drives. II. The brushless DC motor
drive," IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, vol. 25, pp.
274-279, 1989.

APPENDIX
Table 1: Brushless DC motor from Hurst
(Model: DMB0224C10002)
Rated power 26.46 W
(b) Speed: 900 rpm
Rated speed 2054 rpm
Fig. 9: Measured motor current and PWM
Rated voltage 24 V
Rated current 1.16 A
Conclusion Number of poles 10 Poles
The generated PWM signals for driving the power Phase resistance (R) 4.03 
inverter bridge for BLDC motor have been successfully Phase inductance (L) 4.6 mH at 1 kHz
implemented using an 8-bit PIC18F4431, as well a Torque constant (Kt) 0.069 Nm/A
PIC18F18F2431 microcontroller. The BLDC motor control Back EMF constant (Ke) 7.24 Vp/rpm
based on rotor position sensing scheme has been
discussed and successfully implemented. The required
references for power PWM generation have been Authors:
implemented in the PIC code, through which it will provide a Wael A. Salah is currently a PhD candidate in the fields of Energy
flexible and easy-to-change or modify source code in conversion and Power Control at the School of Electrical and
Electronic Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia.
accordance with the motor and circuit requirements. The
Tel. +604-599-6073 Fax +604-594-1023
developed control and power board is functions properly Email: [email protected]
and satisfies the application requirements. Simulation and Dahaman Ishak is a senior lecturer at School of Electrical and
experimental results verify the effective developed drive Electronic Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia.
operation. Email: [email protected].
Khaleel J. Hammadi is currently a PhD candidate at the School of
Acknowledgements Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia.
The authors wish to thank the Universiti Sains Malaysia for Email: [email protected].
Soib Taib is an associate professor at School of Electrical and
providing the USM Fellowship Scheme.
Electronic Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia.
Email: [email protected].
REFERENCES
[1] H. A. Toliyat and S. Campbell, DSP-Based electromechanical
motion control. Boca Raton [Fla.]: CRC Press, 2004.
[2] A. Emadi and J. C. Andreas, Energy-efficient electric motors.
New York: Marcel Dekker, 2005.

PRZEGLĄD ELEKTROTECHNICZNY (Electrical Review), ISSN 0033-2097, R. 87 NR 3/2011 261

View publication stats