Development of low cost multi-phase brushless DC (BLDC) motors with unipolar current excitations

Author

Goplarathnam, T. ; Waikar, Shailesh ; Toliyat, Hamid A. ; Arefeen, Mohammed S. ; Moreira, Julio C.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Texas A&M Univ., College Station, TX, USA

Volume

1

fYear

1999

fDate

1999

Firstpage

173

Abstract

This paper evaluates the performance of different brushless DC (BLDC) motors when excited with unipolar currents. Exciting the BLDC motor with unipolar currents reduces the cost of the drive by decreasing the number of switches used in the converter. Two-phase, three-phase, four-phase and five-phase BLDC motors are considered in this study. 2-D finite element method (FEM) is used to obtain the back-EMF waveforms of the motors, which are then used to calculate the dynamic torque outputs with different current excitations. It is shown that by a proper combination of slots/pole ratio of the machine and unipolar current excitation waveform, lower torque ripple can be obtained than with the conventional 3-phase, 12-slot BLDC motor with 120° bipolar current excitation

Keywords

brushless DC motors; costing; economics; exciters; finite element analysis; machine theory; machine windings; power convertors; 2-D finite element method; back-EMF waveforms; current excitation waveform; dynamic torque outputs; lower torque ripple; multi-phase brushless DC motors; power converter; slots/pole ratio; unipolar current excitation; Brushless DC motors; Brushless motors; Costs; DC motors; Permanent magnet motors; Reluctance motors; Rotors; Switches; Switching converters; Torque;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Industry Applications Conference, 1999. Thirty-Fourth IAS Annual Meeting. Conference Record of the 1999 IEEE

Conference_Location

Phoenix, AZ

ISSN

0197-2618

Print_ISBN

0-7803-5589-X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IAS.1999.799951

Filename

799951