Design and control of a low voltage PMSM for electric vehicle application

In order to reduce the CO₂ emission, German government´s target is to achieve one million electrical cars until 2020 on the German roads. Due to the increased interest in electric vehicles, the requirements of electric traction drives regarding efficiency, power density, volume and weight continually rise. This paper presents a permanent magnet synchronous machine operated with field oriented control. Field oriented control allows for a machine operation at a low voltage level. The permanent magnet synchronous machine is simulated to verify its design and to ensure a stable dynamic behavior of this traction drive before prototyping. This type of control consists of a closed loop in cascade structure. To ensure a stable performance, and to design the controller without oscillation, an accurate knowledge of the machine in the d-q rotor reference frame is required. This can be reached by a finite element analysis, which helps to identify the machine´s parameter and to investigate the field distribution.