Space Vector Current Control of a Brushless PM Machine for Electric Vehicles

This paper proposes a space vector current controller for a brushless permanent magnet (PM) motor in electric and hybrid electric vehicles. The proposed current controller selects space vectors based on the sector selection under a three-level hysteresis comparator to decrease the current ripple. The proposed approach can improve the performance of a brushless PM drive such as the average switching frequency and the total harmonic distortion (THD) compared with the conventional hysteresis current control. The experiment is performed first to verify the proposed control. Then, the method is implemented in the hybrid electric vehicle simulation model with the driving cycle and control strategy to evaluate the drive performance in the vehicle system. The experimental and simulation results indicate that the presented control can improve the performance of the brushless PM machine drive.