2013 International Conference on Power, Energy and Control (ICPEC)

978-1-4673-6030-2/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE 296

Harmonics and Torque Ripple Reduction of Brushless DC Motor (BLDCM)
using Cascaded H-Bridge Multilevel Inverter

M.ArunNoyal Doss
1
, E.Premkumar
2
,G.Ranjith Kumar
3
,Jahir Hussain
2
1
Department of EEE, SRM University, Chennai.
2
PG Scholar, SRM University, Chennai.
3
Department of EEE, Warangal, A.P.
Abstract
Brushless DC motors are widely used in variable speed
drive application. The torque produced by the Brushless
DC (BLDC) motors with trapezoidal back Electromotive
force (BEMF) is constant under ideal condition. However
in practice the torque ripple appears on the delivered
output torque. Smoothness of variable speed drive
operation is critical due to this torque ripple. The
brushless DC motors uses power electronic switches for
the commutation purpose, it creates the Harmonics in
armature current. This paper proposes Cascaded H-
Bridge Multilevel Inverter with current controller used to
reduce the torque ripple and the harmonics. This has
been simulated with the help of PSIM simulation software
and the amount of torque ripple and total harmonic
distortion (THD) are calculated.
Index Terms: Brushless DC motor (BLDC), Multilevel
Inverter (MLI), PSIM, Harmonics, Stator current, torque
ripple, Total Harmonic Distortion (THD).
I.INTRODUCTION
Brushless DC motors with trapezoidal Back-EMF
have several inherent advantages. Most prominent among
them are high efficiency and high power density due to the
absence of field winding, in addition the absence of brushes
leads to high reliability, low maintenance and high
capability. However in a practical BLDC drive, significant
torque pulsations may arise due to the back emf waveform
departing from the ideal.as well as commutation torque
ripple, pulse width modulation (PWM) switching. Torque
ripple due to the current commutation is caused by the
mismatches between the applied electromotive force and
the phase currents with the motor electrical dynamics. It is
one of the main drawbacks of BLDC drives. These torque
ripples produces noise and degrade speed-control
characteristics especially at low speed. Due the power
electronic commutation, the usage of high frequency
switching of power devices, Imperfections in the stator and
the associated control system. The input supply voltage to
the motor contains various harmonics components. During
its operation, high frequency component present in the
input voltage will cause Electromagnetic Interference
(EMI) problem.
Nowadays researchers are trying to reduce the torque ripple
and harmonic component in the BLDC motor. An active
topology to reduce the torque ripple is synchronous motor
presented in [1]. This paper discusses the hysteresis voltage


control method. The torque ripple is minimized using
PWM switching is presented in paper [2], this scheme has
been implemented using a PIC microcontroller to generate
modified pulse width modulation (PWM) signals for
driving power inverter bridge. In paper [3] the current
controller method is used for reducing the torque ripple and
harmonics. This method is based upon the generation of the
quasi-square wave armature current. To reduce torque
ripple the indirect position detection is used in [4], it is
based on the detection of the zero crossing points of the
line voltage measured at the terminal of the motor. The
harmonics and torque ripple reduced by using the L-C filter
proposed in [5]. The proposed method based upon the
current controlled technique. The armature current is
measured and compared with the reference value to
produce the gate pulses for the multilevel inverter.

II.FUNCTIONAL UNITS
The BLDC Motor requires a power
electronic drive circuit and a commutation system for
its operation. The Fig.1 describes the functional units
present in the drive circuit and the associated
commutation controller for the BLDC Motor. A 4
pole BLDC motor is driven by the inverter for 120
degree commutation. The rotor position can be
sensed by a hall-effect sensor, providing three square
wave signals with phase shift of 120
o
. These signals
are decoded by a combinational logic to provide the
firing signals for 120
o
conduction on each of the three
phases. The operation of the system is as follows: as
the motor is of the brushless dc type, the waveforms
of the armature currents are quasi square. These
currents are sensed through current sensors, and
converted to voltage signals. These signals are then
rectified, and a dc component, with the value of the
ceiling of the currents, Imax, is obtained as shown in
Fig.1 This dc signal is compared with a desired
reference Iref, and from this comparison, and error
signal Ierr is obtained. This error is then passed
through a PI control to generate the PWM as shown
in Fig.2 for all the switches of the multi-level inverter
which are sequentially activated by the shaft position
sensor.


2013 International Conference on Power, Energy and Control (ICPEC)

297


Fig. 1 Current Controller of BLDC Motor with MLI

Fig. 2 Current Controller Block

III .CASCADED H-BRIDGE MULTILEVEL INVERTER
The clamped inverter, also known as a
neutral clamped converter is difficult to be expanded
to multilevel because of the natural problem of the
DC link voltage unbalancing. The flying capacitor
inverter is difficult to be realized because each
capacitor must be charged with different voltages as
the voltage level increases. Moreover, the clamped
inverter, also known as a neutral clamped converter is
difficult to be expanded to multilevel because of the
natural problem of the DC link voltage unbalancing.
It consists of two capacitor voltages in series and uses
the center tap as the neutral. Each phase leg of the
three level converters has two pairs of switching
devices in series. The center of each device pair is
clamped to the neutral through clamping diodes. The
waveform obtained from the three level converters is
a quasi-square wave output. The Switching sequence
of three phase five level MLI is represented in Fig.3

Fig. 3 switching sequence of three phase five level MLI

A simulation analysis is made on this proposed work
which is presented in Fig.4.This circuit has been
simulated using the PSIM simulation software.

Fig. 4 Closed loop PSIM diagram of BLDC Motor with Current
Controller using MLI

IV.SIMULATION RESULTS
Various simulations are done using
simulation software for the converter circuit
presented in Fig. 4. The output of the inverter is
given to the BLDC motor. The motor currents are
sensed and it is given to the rectifier and the obtained
value is compared with the reference value and the
error value is processed using PI controller. The
obtained value is compared with the triangular wave
to generate controlled PWM signals. The obtained
pulses are taken from position sensor signals of the
motor to give pulses to the multilevel inverter. Fig. 5
2013 International Conference on Power, Energy and Control (ICPEC)

298

shows the phase to phase voltage of the Brushless DC
motor. The harmonics effect is analyzed by taking the
FFT analysis for the voltage and the current
waveforms of the Brushless DC motor.

Fig. 5 phase to phase voltage of BLDC motor

The motor currents are sensed and it is given to the
rectifier and the obtained value is compared with the
reference value and the error value is processed using
PI controller. The obtained value is compared with
the triangular wave to generate controlled PWM
signals. The obtained pulses are taken from position
sensor signals of the motor to give pulses to
multilevel inverter.Fig.6 shows the output signal
from the Hall Effect sensor of the Brushless DC
motors.
Fi
g .6 output of Hall Effect sensors.

V.TORQUE RIPPLE CALCULATION
It is defined as periodic increase and
decrease in output torque .The formula for finding the
torque ripple the percentage of the difference
between the maximum torque (Tmax) and the
minimum torque (Tmin) compared to the average
torque (Tavg).
Torque ripple can be calculated by the following formula

Fig .7 shows the output torque waveform of the Brushless
DC motor.

Fig. 7 Torque waveform of BLDC motor
Let us take the values for the one cycle. The
maximum value of torque ( Tmax) is 2.24,the
minimum value of the torque is (Tmin) 1.82 and the
average value of this torque is 2.03.from using the
above value the torque ripple is calculated the
obtained torque ripple value is 20.68 %. Which is low
compared to other type of control techniques. The
amount of torque ripple is reduced due to the
smoothness of the current.
VI.THD CALCULATION
The Total Harmonic Distortion (THD)
which tells the amount of harmonics present in the
current or voltage. The Fig.8 which shows the FFT
analysis of the Phase A current of the Brushless DC
motor.it is found that THD is 14.1%.The Fig.9 which
shows the FFT analysis of the Phase-Phase voltage of
the Brushless DC motor. The amount THD also
calculated for this waveform. The amount of THD is
24.3 %. Reduction in THD results smoothness in
armature current and the voltage waveforms. This
improves the commutation effect of the motor.

Fig. 8 FFT analysis of phase current A.
2013 International Conference on Power, Energy and Control (ICPEC)

299


Fig. 9 FFT analysis of phase voltage.

Fig. 10 speed of BLDC motor.

Fig.10 shows the speed waveform of Brushless DC motor.
The harmonics and the torque ripple can be reduced by
smoothening the current waveform.

VII.CONCLUSION
This paper has proposed harmonics and
torque ripples have been reduced using multilevel
inverter with the current controlled technique. The
harmonics content of the voltage and Current for a
BLDC motor is analyzed and the amount of torque
ripple and the THD also calculated. From the
simulated results it is evident that the harmonics
Components at the switching frequency and multiples
of switching frequency are reduced also the torque
ripples are reduced. The main advantage of this
method is it uses one current controller for the three
phases.

REFERENCES
[1] KayhanGulez, Ali Ahmed Adam, and HalitPastaci, Torque
Ripple and EMI Noise Minimization in PMSM Using Active
FilterTopology and Field-Oriented Control, IEEE Trans.
IndustrialElectronics, Vol. 55, No. 1, pp. 251-256, Jan 2008.
[2] WaelA.Salah, DahamanIshak, Khaleel and J. Hammadi PWM
SWITCHING STRATEGY FOR TORQUERIPPLE
MINIMIZATION IN BLDC MOTOR Journal of
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING, VOL. 62, NO. 3, 2011,
141146
[3] J.Karthikeyan, Dr.R.Dhanasekaran. SIMULATION AND
IMPLEMENTATION OF CURRENT CONTROL OF
BLDC MOTOR BASED ON A COMMON DC
SIGNAL.International Journal of Engineering Science and
TechnologyVol. 2(6), 2010, 1632-163.
[4] VanisriA,DevarajanN.Torque ripple minimization in indirect
position detection of permanent magnet DC motorEuropean
journal of scientific research vol no:65 no.4(2011)
[5] A. Albert Rajan, Dr. S. Vasantharathna.Harmonics and
Torque Ripple Minimization using L-C Filter for Brushless
DC Motors.International Journal of Recent Trends in
Engineering, Vol 2, No. 5, November 2009.
[6] Kwang-Woon Lee, Dae-Kyong Kim, Tae-Duck Kim, and Jae-
Young Choi.Commutation Torque Ripple Reduction in a
Position Sensorless Brushless DC Motor Drive. 2004.35rh
Annul IEEE Power Electronics Specialists Conference.
[7] VM Varatharaju, B L Mathur, K.Udhayakumar A comparative
Study with modeling and Simulation of Torque Ripple
Reduction Techniques in BLDC Motor European Journal of
Scientific Research ISSN 1450-216X Vol.52 No.3 (2011),
pp.295-305.
[8] R.GouthamGovindRaju, S.JohnPowl, A.Sathishkumar,
P.Sivaprakasam Mitigation of Torque for Brushless DC
Motor: Modeling and Control International Journal of
Scientific & Engineering Research Volume 3, Issue 5, May-
2012