Homework 2 : pulse width modulation applied to induction

drive
Master international MEIE
September 2014

Introduction

Variable speed induction drives are realized by supplying a variable alternative voltage, that is a
voltage which RMS value and frequency are controlled. The synchronism speed (no-load speed) of the
induction motor is directly related to the voltage frequency. The torque ripple of the machine is directly
linked to the current waveform, and ideally the current should be purely sinusoidal to eliminate torque
ripple that generate noise and cause wearing of the mechanical parts. However, it is not possible
to consider using lters for high power applications. Therefore a special strategy must be used to
optimize the frequency spectrum of the voltage, in order to exploit the "natural" lters constituted by
the impedance of the windings.
The general set-up schematic is represented on the Fig. (1). The voltage is rectied from the main
supply (which has xed RMS value and frequency) to supply a DC voltage, then it is transformed
into an AC voltage thanks to a so-called inverter. The inverter generates an alternative voltage by
"chopping" the continuous voltage generated by the rectier at a regular period. This period is dened
by the carrier period Tc .
To control the voltage applied to the motor, a modulating signal is used. In the case at hand, the
voltage should be sinusoidal to obtain a sinusoidal current, so the modulating signal is sinusoidal with
frequency fm and its amplitude can be set to a desired value. Finally, the amplitude of the modulating
signal controls the RMS value of the output voltage. This will result in a voltage waveform constituted
by pulses with variable duty ratio (duty ratio is dened by the ratio between the time where the voltage
is not equal to zero over a carrier period). This strategy is known as pulse width modulation (PWM).

Procedure

In this project, you will use the simulation of a simplied version (only one phase is considered) of
the induction motor fed by an inverter (le Induction.mdl ). To run the simulation, you can use
the script initInductionSupply.m. In this script, you can edit the following parameters for your
simulation :
carrier period : Tc
modulating signal frequency : fm
modulating signal amplitude : Am
antialiasing lter cut-o frequency : fcut
sampling frequency : fsamp
length of the recording : T

When the script is ran, the simulation is automatically launched and returns the variables visualized in the various scope. They are available in your workspace. Their names are consistent
with the names of the scopes. Each of them is an array of values, the rst column is time, the
1

System studied
Re tier

DC

Inverter

AC
Indu tion
motor

Main
Measured
voltage

Figure 1: Schematic of the supply of an induction motor for variable speed application
second is the actual variable. To plot one of these variables you can use the plot function, e.g.
plot(Voltage(:,1),Voltage(:,2),Current(:,1),Current(:,2)) will plot on the same graph voltage and current vs time.
The fourier transform (or rather its discrete version : DFT) will be the tool to analyse the eects of
three parameters of the PWM namely : frequency and amplitude of the modulation signal, and period
of the carrier. To assist you in this task, you will use the script easyFFT.m that returns the centered
FFT of the signal and the frequency against which it can be plotted. Example : to perform an FFT on
the sampled current, you should type [f,currentFFT]=easyFFT(sampledCurrent,1/fsamp). Note
that the DFT is only relevant on sampled signals !

Project report

The goal of the project is to understand the PWM, that is the inuence of the tuning parameters that
is to determine the eects :
of the modulating signal amplitude Am ;
of the ratio between the frequencies of the carrier and the modulating and the carrier signals.

The following bounds should be respected to correctly generate the PWM :

0 Am 2
the ratio of the carrier frequency with regard to the modulation frequency ( ffmc with fc =

should be an integer and should be less than 21 to avoid lengthy simulation.

1
Tc

Your report should therefore present well chosen simulation experiments that highlight the dierent
points you want to explain. For each experiment, the procedure should be documented and the
choices explained (especially for the FFT parameters i.e. length of the recording, and sampling, cut-o
frequency of the anti-aliasing lter). The results should be well presented and clearly cited in the
document. Limitations and recommendations on the use of PWM will also be appreciated.