Regenerative braking of series-wound brushed DC electric motors for electric vehicles

The most widely used configuration of DC machines is series-wound type. The main advantages are simpler control system design and no separately excited field windings. However, the use of DC motors in electric vehicles has declined dramatically in the current decade. Unless the efficiency of such a system can be improved significantly the use of DC motors in electrical vehicles becomes unattractive. One possible way of improving the efficiency is to include regenerative braking. Regenerative braking is an energy recovery mechanism used to improve the drive distance of electric vehicles. Hence in this paper, a regenerative braking mechanism for a series-wound dc motor system is proposed. The simulation results are also presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed regenerative braking system.