Hysteresis current control for six-phase induction motor drives with reduced ripple and improved tracking based on subspace decomposition and restrained voltage vectors

Abstract

Six-phase induction motor (6PIM) drives offer enhanced fault tolerance and reduced per-phase ratings. Hysteresis current control (HCC) is attractive for 6PIMs because it is simple, robust and fast. HCC is conventionally implemented so that each leg voltage is directly set based on the respective phase-current error. However, this approach does not consider that, in multiphase drives, phase voltages and currents are related through a combination of equivalent impedances corresponding to various subspaces. In general, there is a notable dissimilarity between these impedances, being typically small for secondary ( xyxy ) subspaces. This can cause large current distortion and poor reference tracking. This article proposes an improved HCC for 6PIM drives. Instead of directly inputting the per-phase current error to the hysteresis comparator and directly applying the switching states chosen by it, the input and output components associated with different subspaces are segregated. The input and output xyxy components are nullified in open loop so that the xyxy impedance no longer affects the HCC behavior, even if low. This prevents the disrupting xyxy currents, ensures effective tracking of the torque/flux-producing αβαβ reference current, and enables reconfiguration-less fault tolerance. Experiments using 6PIMs with different winding configurations corroborate the significant advantages of the proposal.