Direct Torque Control of Induction Machine with Variable Amplitude

Control of Flux and Torque Hysteresis Bands

Jun-Koo Kang ,Dae-Woong Chung and Seung-Ki SUI
School of Electrical Engineering
Seoul National University
San 56-1, Shillim-Dong, Kwanak-Ku, Seoul, Korea, 151-742
Phone :+82-2-880-7243, Fax : +82-2-878-1452 e-mail :sulsk@plaza.snu.ac.kr, httD://eeDel.snu.ac.kr

Abstract In this paper, effects of the hysteresis bands on the

Direct Torque Control (DTC) of an induction machine a r e
investigated, and a method to control the switching frequency of
inverter by a variable amplitude of the hysteresis band is
proposed for D T C of an induction machine. A major drawback
of thc conventional D T C is an unpredictable inverter switching
frequency which varies due to operating speed, load condition
and parameters of the induction machine. Therefore the
amplitude of the hysteresis band should be large enough to avoid
excessive inverter switching a t any operating region, which
inevitably causes relatively large torque ripple especially in the
low speed region. This paper proposes an effective switching
frequency regulation method which consists of hysteresis band
controller and switching frequency command generator. The
effectiveness of the proposed strategy is analyzed and compared
with the conventional method.

This phenomenon makes flux and torque hysteresis controller

to have different contributions to the total switching
frequency. It means that the amplitude of flux and torque
hysteresis controller should be regulated separately for
effective utilization of given total switching frequency
command. In this paper, total switching frequency command
f,* is divided into two components, i.e., fsi and j,:, and
then each command frequency is separately regulated by
switching frequency controller which modifies the amplitude
of flux and torque hysteresis comparators.
11. SWITCHING FREQUENCY VARIATION IN DTC

An induction machine can be modeled with stator and

rotor fluxes as state variables by the following equation.

1. INTRODUCTION

Since the innovative studies in the mid-1980s [I]-[2],

application fields of the Direct Torque Control (DTC)
strategy have been increased including paper machines,
traction and mill drives. DTC provides a fast dynamic
response of torque and a robustness to machine parameter
variations without current regulators. Among several DTC
strategies [3 1, the voltage vector selection strategy using
switching table has been widely used because it is easy in
concept and simple in implementation, only using torque and
flux hysteresis comparators. The amplitude of hysteresis band
strongly influences the inverter performances such as flux and
torque ripples, current harmonics and switching frequency of
power device. A major drawback of the conventional DTC is
unpredictable variation of switching frequency according to
machine parameters and operating speed conditions even
though the amplitude of hysteresis band set to constant value.
Therefore the hysteresis band has to be set large enough to
limit the inverter switching frequency below a certain level
that is usually determined by thermal restriction of power
devices. Since the hysteresis bands are set to cope with the
worst case, the system performance is inevitably degraded in
a certain operating range, especially in a low speed region.
In this paper, a new DTC control strategy with variable
hysteresis bands is presented. The proposed strategy modifies
the hysteresis bands so that the inverter switching frequency
can follow a given command frequency. The switching
frequency variation characteristic of the flux hysteresis
controller is different from that of torque hysteresis controller.

0-7803-5293-9199$10.00 0 1999 IEEE

where os and or are stator and rotor flux complex vectors,

v, is stator voltage complex vector, R, and R, are stator and
rotor resistances, L , and L~ are stator and rotor self
inductances, L, is a mutual inductance, c is leakage
coefficient with CT = 1 - L: / L,L, and 0 , is rotor angular
velocity. The electromagnetic torque can be expressed in
terns of stator and rotor flux as

where P is the number of poles of the machine and t

denotes the complex conjugate. Using (1) and (2), variations
of torque and flux during control sampling time t s pat (k+l)h
sampling instant can be expressed as follow : [4]

640

(4)

As can be seen from (3), the variation of torque A< during

tsp,

111. THE PROPOSED SWITCHING FREQUENCY REGULATION

i.e., torque slope is a function of stator voltage, stator and

rotor fluxes, and motor speed. Therefore, in a torque

hysteresis controller, an elapsing time to move from lower to
upper limit, and vice versa can be changed according to
operating conditions. This characteristic makes the variation
of the switching frequency according to various load and
speed operating conditions. In case of stator flux, as can be
seen from (4), the angle between stator voltage vector and
flux vector determines the rate of flux variation. As this angle
varies with a rotating stator flux in the space vector plane,
flux slope is changed. Therefore the rotating speed of stator
flux proportionally affects the variation cycle of flux slope.
Fig. 1 shows the switching frequencies of the torque and
flux hysteresis controllers versus motor speed with different
hysteresis band amplitude, where p7 denotes the size of
hysteresis band of torque controller in per unit and p,
denotes that of flux controller. As can be seen, fi has
maximum value in a medium speed range while switching
frequency of the flux hysteresis controller fa,
is proportional
to the rotating speed con,.Thus, for a regulation of switching
frequency, two variable amplitude hysteresis controllers are
required.

n
( r l l i 4 0 0 ' 3 ib) ( i 4 U l (rl

P-aOZ

in

8AOi

id1 p U O 7

id

g,-OO5

a8

The basic implementation of the proposed DTC system is

presented in Fig. 2. The goal is to maintain the switching
frequency at a commanded value equal tot:.
Fig 2 is a
diagram of flux hysteresis controller, but a torque controller
also has a same structure. The basic technique to achieve the
constant switching frequency is not quite different from the
case of hysteresis current controller which also modifies the
amplitude of hysteresis comparator [5]. The proposed
switching frequency regulation strategy can be briefly
described as; pulse counter counts the output pulse of
hysteresis comparator S, , and the counter output is used as a
feedback to the PI controller. Frequency command, J,:, is
integrated to obtain a switching count command. Then PI
controller modifies the amplitude of hysteresis band in order
to drive feedback-switching count, N , , of flux controller to
commanded values, N ; . The dotted line indicates the
optional amplitude predictor which can be used as a
feedforward compensation signal. But for an accuate
prediction, electical parameters and rotor speed are required
as can be seen from (3) and (4).
Fig. 3 shows a DTC control block diagram with the
proposed variable hysteresis band controller. Like hysteresis
bands setting procedure in the conventional DTC, the ratio of
f,; and f,; should be determined depending on the
application requirement. A frequency command divider
calculates two frequency commands based on the ratio. Stator
voltage vector v, is selected by S, ,S, , and stator flux sector
Y . A voltage selection rule is same as the conventional DTC.
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS

I'v
0

3M

lcel

1440

llD0

Motor spccd om(dmin)

(a) Torque hysteresis control.

Simulations have been carried out for the evaluation of a

proposed algorithm. Simulation parameters are as follows ;
Motor rating : 3 phase, 4 pole, 220V, 7.5kW, 40 N-m
Parameter: Rs= 0 . 1 5 8 , Rr = 0 . 1 7 8 , Ls=35mH, Lm=33.8mH,
Lr=35mH , load inertia =0.4 kg-m2.
PI
Controller

k x o r spccd mm (dniin)

Fig. 2. Flux hysteresis controller with switching frequency regulation.

(b) Flux hysteresis control.

Fig. I . Simulated switching frequency of hysteresis controllers versus
motor speed with different hysteresis bands of pa, and PT.

64 1

Switching Frequency

voltage vector

Selection

I -1

IIII

tmledor

Fig. 3. Control block diagram of the Proposed DTC

Fig. 4 shows the torque control characteristic of the proposed

DTC method. At I = 0.02 s, torque command is set to 50N-m,
120% of the rated value, and at motor speed U,,, = 1750 r/min,
120% load torque is applied. As can be seen, the amplitudes
of torque and flux ripple vary according to operating speed .
For comparison , figures of torque and flux are also presented
with constant hysteresis band. Fig. 5 shows the variation of
hysteresis band under the same operating condition as Fig. 4.
As can be seen, both torque and flux controllers maintain
their frequencies at command values (dotted lines)
whilep,. and pg are varied according to operating speed.
The fkequency errors of flux in low speed region and error of
torque in high speed region come from the limitation of
control cycle time (here 2 5 ~ s ) .

0.4

0.8

ci

0
-

-1 -

" 9

-.

0.0

1.2

1.6

2.0

time (s)
Fig. 5 . Switching frequency control characteristic of system
V. CONCLUSION

s,

In this paper, the switching frequency of DTC inverter is

controlled for the improvement of drive performance. The
main advantages of the proposed DTC method are ; efficient
and stable utilization of power devices by regulating inverter
switching frequency, and improvement of torque ripple
characteristic in a low and high speed regions. The
differences between conventional and proposed DTC have
been investigated. The simulation results verify the feasibility
of the proposed control.

-'i 8

[l]

[2]

[3]

REFERENCES
I.Takahashi,T.Noguchi, " A new quick-response and high-efficiency
control strategy of an induction motor, "IEEE Trans. on Ind.
Appl,V01.22,NO.5,pp.820-827,1986.
M. Depenbrock, " Direct self-control ( DSC )of inverter-fed induction
machine, "IEEE Trans. on Power Elcr.,Vol.3, No.4, pp.420-429,1988
G. Buja, D. Casadei, " DTC-based strategies for induction motor
drives in Con$ Rec. IEEE-IECON, pp1506-1516,1997
J.K. Kang, S.K. SUI, " Torque Ripple Minimization Strategy for
Direct Torque Control of Induction Motor, " in Con$ Rec. IEEE-IAS,
pp. 438-443, 1998.
L.Malesani, P. Mattavelli," High-performance hysteresis modulation
technique for active filters," in Proc. IEEE-APEC, pp. 939-946, 1996
'I,

[4]

.0.0

0.4

0.8

1.2

time (s)

1.6

2.0

[5]

Fig. 4. Step torque characteristic of the proposed DTC induction

machine drive. (upper two; conventional DTC for comparison.)

642