20 kW Water-cooled Prototype of a Buck-Boost Bidirectional DC-DC Converter Topology for Electrical Vehicle Motor Drives

F. Caricchi, F. Crescimbirii, A . Di Napoli

University of Rome "LaSapienza" Department of Electrical Engineering Via Eudossiana, 18 - 00184 Rome (Ita!y)

Abstract

I n brushless dc motor drives devoted to EVs a bi-directional dc-dc converter can be used to control suitably both motoring and regenerative braking operations in order to improve the motor drive performance. I n consideration of such an application this paper deals with the experimental study of a buck-boost bi-directional dc-dc converter topology which has been conceived for the use in EVs propelled by means of wheel-direct-coupling arial-flux PM motor drives. The paper discusses the converter modes of operation and reports experimental results taken from a 20 kW watercooled prototype of the proposed converter topology.

proper control of the motor average current at the commanded value. On the other hand, the use of a dcdc converter having a bidirectional arrangement allows an improvement in the control of the power flow reversal due regenerative braking operations of the motor drive, so that a significant amount of the vehicle kinetic energy can be recovered in either the battery or an additional ultracapacitor tank by means of the control of the braking current. Furthermore, if the PWM inverter output terminals are switched from the motor to the ac power grid, the bi-directional dcdc converter can be used together with the inverter free-wheeling diodes in order to operate as vehicle on-board unity-power-factor battery charger. 1. I N T R O D U C T I O N The use of a bidirectional dcdc converter in EV motor drives has been discussed previously in reference [6] by The use of a bidirectional dcdc converter in the dc link considering a 2 kW prototype of a boost bidirectional dcdc of brushless dc motor drives devoted to the propulsion of converter topology. This converter prototype is currently EVs allows the control of both motoring and regenerative used aboard an electrical scooter prototype [2, 41, which has br,aking operations, and it can contribute to a significant 50 k d h masinium speed and 92 V battery voltage. Since the improvement of the motor drive performance. For motoring battery has low rated voltage, in such a scooter motor drive operations the d c d c converter is used to adjust the inverter the bidirectional d c d c converter used only to accomplish dc input voltage vs. the motor speed in order to reduce the step-up modes of operations. However, EVs such as electric ripple of the motor current waveform. This fact is of a cars and buses are generally designed to operate in a wide particular importance in the case of slotless asial-flus PM range of speed and the battery has rated voltage in the motor drives, which have been proposed recently for low- range from 180 V to 360 V because of the power level speed high-torque motor drive applications [ I ] such as the handled in such EV applications. Thereby, a bidirectional direct driving of EV wheels 12, 3, 41. buck-boost dc-dc converter topology is preferable for such Slotless axial-flus PM machines have a very low EV motor drives, in order to control suitably the inverter machine inductance (e.g. few hundreds of pH, typically), input voltage in a wide range of the vehicle speed. In consideration of the above matter, this paper deals and thereby the motor current waveform may be affected by a significant ripple if the CWWM inverter which supplies with the esperimental study of a 20 kW water-cooled the machine is fed by a constant dc input voltage [ I , 51. prototype of a buck-boost bidirectional dc-dc converter Since the ripple of the motor current waveform depends on topology, which is accomplished by means of the cascade of the difference between the instantaneous values of the a bidirectional step-down stage together with a bivoltage applied to the motor terminals and the motor EMF, a directional step-down stage. The converter prototype is reduction of the current ripple can be achieved by adjusting intended for application in the propulsion drive of an electric continuously the inverter input voltage with respect to the car prototype, which is being under development by using machine EMF while the inverter switchings are used for the twin wheeldirect-coupling water-cooled asial-flux PM

I dc

Fig. 1 Buck-Boost Cascade Bidirectional DC-DC Converter Topology.

motor drives. This paper discusses the converter modes of operation and shows experimental results t<aken from the converter prototype.

2. CONVERTER MODES OF OPERATION

EMF becomes slightly lower than the battery voltage. Thereafter, as the vehicle speed increases and the motor EMF becomes greater than the battery voltage, SL is turned on permanently, whereas the switch S$ begins switching operations at variable duty ratio in order to regulate the inverter input voltage up to the value required for motoring operations at the maximum speed of the vehicle. Table I Converter modes of operation and related conduction states of the switches.
SYW
switching

Fig. 1 shows a bidirectional buck-boost dc-dc converter topology which is accomplished by means of the cascade connection of a bidirectional stepdown stage together with a bidirectional step-up stage. This converter topology allows the output voltage to be higher or lower than the input voltage for either case the inductor current has the direction shown in Fig. 1 (i.e. motoring operations) or the inductor current reverses because of regenerative br,aking operations of the motor drive. In order to accomplish both step-down and step-up modes of operation for either direction of the inductor current, the converter switches are operated as summarised in Table I, where the word "switching" means that the switch is operated at constant switching frequency and variable duty ratio, whereas "on" and "off mean that the switch is kept continuously in the on state or in the off state, respectively. The converter modes of operation are determined by the vehicle running conditions. Starting from the vehicle standstill, the converter step-down stage is initially operated to step down the battery voltage and control the inverter input voltage at the level required to minimize the ripple of the motor current. To this purpose, the switch S is L operated at variable duty ratio till the line-to-line motor

Modes of operation hfOtOring Step-do wn A4otoring step-up Braking Step-down Braking step-up

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Whenever regenerative braking operations are commanded Su: is turned off, whereas the switch Sf;*. is turned on in order to give a path for the motor braking

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Fig. 2 Oscilloscope traces of the inductor current waveform (left) and the output capacitor current waveform (right) (scale 20 A/div; time scale 20 pddiv)

current. A delay blanking time between the gating signals of the two switches is provided in order to avoid a "shoot through" or cross-conduction current through the switches and the converter output capacitor. The switch SL turns off naturally because of the reversal of the inductor current. As the vehicle speed decreases, the duty ratio of the switch Sf;, is increased in order to regulate suitably the braking current. When the value of the rectified motor EMF becomes close to the value of the battery voltage Sf;, is turned on permanently, whereas the switch S& starts switching operations in order to sustain the desired braking current against the battery voltage. As the vehicle speed decreases further the duty ratio of the switch Sfp is increased accordingly up to the maximum value set by the converter control algorithm (e.g. the maximum value of duty ratio is set in the range from 0.6 to 0.7 because of the effect of the converter losses on the voltage transfer ratio at high values of duty ratio). In either motoring or regenerative braking steady-state operations the voltage transfer ratio of the converter can be found as the product of the conversion ratios of the two converter stages in cascade. If dk is the duty ratio of the switch Sk and duT is the duty ratio of the switch SG, for motoring operations the converter output-to-input voltage conversion ratio can be written as:

where it is considered that du7= 0 if 0 < d z < 1 and dE= 1 if 0 < du;< 1. Analogous to eq. (l), for regenerative braking operations the converter voltage transfer ratio can be found as a function of the duty ratios d i and d:p, which relate to switching operations of the switches Sf;, and Sf;,, respectively.
3. EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

In order to investigate the converter modes of operation discussed above, a 20 kW prototype of the converter topology shown in Fig. 1 was arranged by using third-generation IGBT's power modules rated 1200 V, 200 A, a ferritecore inductor rated 300 pH, 100 A, and electrolytic capacitors rated 3500 pF, 450 V. The converter IGBTs are operated at 16.67 kHz switching frequency and variable duty ratio, as discussed previously. Both the IGBT's power modules and the ferrite-core inductor are mounted on a water-cooled heatsink, and such a converter arrangement allows a significant reduction of both the size and the weight of the converter. An experimental study was carried out in order to monitor significant quantities and evaluate both the converter output-to-input voltage transfer ratio and the converter eficiency. For the testing purposes, the dc supply of the converter prototype was arranged by means of a leadacid battery, whereas a no-load separate excited dc motor was used as converter load.

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Fig. 2 shows the waveforms of the inductor current and the output capacitor current, which relate to step-up modes of operations at the maximum value of the converter prototype output-to-input voltage transfer ratio (i.e. the duty ratio is d z = 0.768). As shown, when the switch S z is off the capacitor output current is 10 A, and at this converter load current the inductor current has an average value of about 53 A. Fig. 3 shows experimental results of the converter prototype voltage conversion ratio as a function of the duty ratios d z and d;. The continuous line shown in Fig. 3 is the ideal voltage transfer ratio characteristic which can be calculated from eq. (1). It appears clearly that at high duty ratios the voltage transfer ratio still follows closely the ideal characteristic, and this fact indicates that the parasitic elements have a reduced impact on the converter voltage conversion ratio. Fig. 4 and Fig. 5 show curves of the converter prototype efficiency vs. load conditions. Fig. 4 relates to converter test conditions at light load and constant duty ratio dU:,= 0.69, whereas Fig. 5 shows the curve of the converter efficiency resulting from operations at constant duty ratio du: = 0.5 and output power up to the converter rating power. As shown, the curve of the converter efficiency has a quite flat trend, and at the converter rating load it was found that the eficiency is about 92%. Experimental data were taken also for regenerative braking modes of operation. As an example, Fig. 6 shows traces of the motor current, the battery current and the battery voltage due to a sudden braking command which is removed after few seconds. As shown, the braking command produces the reversal of the motor current which flows back in the battery. Then, the braking command is removed and the converter motoring operations start again. Unfortunately, the dc motor used for testing the converter has a low inertia and thereby braking transient is quite short in time. Further to that, at the time the tests were carried out the control loop of the br,aking current was not available yet, and thereby the results shown in Fig. 6 refer to converter step-down operations at constant duty ratio.
4. CONCLUSIONS

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This paper has discussed the modes of operation of a bidirectional buck-boost converter topology and shown experimental results t'aken from a 20 kW water-cooled converter prototype. Such a dc-dc converter topology can find application in either dc or brusliless dc motor drives devoted to EVs, and it will be used in wheel-direct-coupling axial-flus PM motor drives which are being under development for the propulsion of an electric car prototype. With reference to the axial-flus PM motor drive

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Fig. 6 Converter regenerative braking operations (time scale 1 ddiv): traces of the battery voltage (vb) and current (Ib) (voltage scale 30 V/div; current scale 60 Ndiv) and trace of the motor current ( I , ) (current scale 25 Ndiv).

configuration shown in Fig. 7, the bidirectional dcdc converter is devoted to operations as power electronic converter is devoted to operations as power electronic interface between a low-voltage battery supply and the inverter input terminals, in order to adjust continuously the inverter input voltage with respect to the motor EMF. For motoring operations such a dc link voltage control allows a reduction of the motor current ripple, which may be significant in the case of axial-flux PM machine due to the very low machine inductance. In addition to that, the control of the inverter input voltage allows the use of a high value of the inverter modulation index throughout the range of the vehicle speed, and this fact allows an improvement in the inverter efficiency. For motor drive regenerative braking operations, the bidirectional dcdc converter is devoted to the control of the motor braking current, which is let be free-

wheeling in the inverter diodes in order to recovery a significant amount of the vehicle kinetic energy. Laboratory tests of the motor drive arrangement shown in Fig. 7 are being under development and the results will be reported as won as available. REFERENCES [I] F. Caricchi, F. Crescimbini, A. Di Napoli, 0. Honorati, T.A. Lipo, G. Noia, E. Santini Development of a IGBT Inverter Driven AxialFlux PM Synchronous Motor Drive Proceedings of the Fourth European Conference on Power Electronics and Applications, Firenze (Italy), September 3 - 6, 1991.

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CURRENT-REGULATED PWM-VSI

BUCK-BOOST BI-DIRE CTIONAL DC-DC CONVERTER

Fig. 7 Layout of wheeldirectcoupling axial-flux PM motor drive

[2]

[3]

[4]

F. Caricchi, F. Crescimbini, E. Fedeli, G. Noia Design and Construction of a Wheel-DirectlyCoupled Axial-Flux PM Motor Prototype for EVs - Proceedings of 1994 IEEE-IAS Annual Meeting, Denver, Colorado (USA), October 2 7, 1994. 0. Honorati, F. Caricchi, F. Crescimbini, A. Di Napoli, E. Santini - Axial-Flux AC Motor Drives: A New Solution for Innovative Electrical Vehicles Proceedings of the 27th ISATA, International Dedicated Conference on Electric, Hybrid and Alternative Fuel Vehicles, Aaclien (Germany), October 31st - November 4th, 1994. F. Caricchi, F. Crescimbini, G. Noia, E. Santini Prototype of an Innovative Electrical Scooter for Application in Zero-Emission Urban Mobility Proceedings of the 12th International Elcctrical Vehicle Symposium, Anaheim, California (USA), December 5 - 7, 1991.

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F. Caricchi, F. Crescimbini, T.A. Lip0 - Converter Topology with Load-Neutral Modulation for IEEE Trapezoidal-EMF PM Motor Drives Trans. on Power Electronics, Vol. 9, No. 2, March 1994, pp. 232-239. F. Caricchi, F. Crescimbini, G. Noia, D. Pirolo Experimental study of a bidirectional dc-dc converter for the dc link voltage control and the regenerative braking in PM motor drives devoted to electrical vehicles - Proceedings of the IEEE 9th Applied Power Electronics Conference and Esposition, Orlando, Florida (USA), February 13 - 17, 1994.

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