Robust current control and commutation tuning for an IPMSM drive

The operating performance improvement of an interior permanent magnet synchronous motor (IPMSM) drive via robust current control and intelligent commutation tuning is studied in this paper. First, the nominal motor parameters are estimated and a robust current control scheme is designed to possess close and robust winding current tracking performance. It is known that the torque generating capability of an IPMSM is affected by the changes of commutation instant and field excitation. The proof is given to show that the latter can be equivalently achieved by tuning the commutation instant, and the effects of these two variations on the IPMSM drive performances under speed open-loop and closed-loop conditions are observed analytically and experimentally. Then accordingly, an intelligent tuning approach is developed to automatically determine the advance of commutation instant. The minimum current command is achieved to obtain better torque generating capability equivalently. A DSP-based IPMSM drive is established and the effectiveness of the proposed control approaches is demonstrated experimentally.