Design and prototyping methods for brushless motors and motor control

Abstract

In this report, simple, low-cost design and prototyping methods for custom brushless permanent magnet synchronous motors are explored. Three case-study motors are used to develop, illustrate and validate the methods. Two 500W hub motors are implemented in a direct-drive electric scooter. The third case study, a 10kW axial flux motor, is used to demonstrate the flexibility of the design methods. A variety of ways to predict the motor constant, which relates torque to current and speed to voltage, are presented. The predictions range from first-order DC estimates to full dynamic simulations, yielding increasingly accurate results. Ways to predict winding resistance, as well as other sources of loss in motors, are discussed in the context of the motor's overall power rating. Rapid prototyping methods for brushless motors prove to be useful in the fabrication of the case study motors. Simple no-load evaluation techniques confirm the predicted motor constants without large, expensive test equipment. Methods for brushless motor controller design and prototyping are also presented. The case study, a two channel, 1kW per channel brushless motor controller, is fully developed and used to illustrate these methods. The electrical requirements of the controller (voltage, current, frequency) influence the selection of components, such as power transistors and bus capacitors. Mechanical requirements, such as overall dimensions, heat transfer, and vibration tolerance, also play a large role in the design. With full-system prototyping in mind, the controller integrates wireless data acquisition for debugging. Field-oriented AC control is implemented on low-cost hardware using a novel modification of the standard synchronous current regulator. The controller performance is evaluated under load on two case study systems: On the direct-drive electric scooter, it simultaneously and independently controls the two motors. On a high-performance remote-control car, a more extreme operating point is tested with one motor.