A Low Cost Drive Strategy for BLDC motor with

low torque ripples

Xu Feipeng, Li Tiecai, Tang Pinghua
Electrical Engineering College, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, Heilongjiang province, China
fpxu@hotmail.com
Abstract Although Brushless DC motors are widely used in
industry drives, they cannot substitute the position of the
permanent magnet synchronous motors in the highperformance applications due to the relatively high torque
ripple. In this paper, three different single current sensor
techniques are analyzed and compared. In order to minimize
the pulsating torque, this paper presents a low cost BLDCM
drive system, which adds only a current sensor and PID
controller compared to the conventional drive system. The
experimental results show this system has lower torque ripples,
compared to the conventional driving method. This is helpful
for finding wider application range of BLDCM.
Index Terms BLDC. Current sensor. Torque ripple.

I. INTRODUCTION
The BLDCMs which have trapezoidal back EMF have many
advantages over the PMSMs which have sinusoidal back EMF,
such as high power density, high torque to inertia ratio,
simplicity of inverter control, and no need of high resolution
position sensor. However, the BLDCMs have worse output
torque pulsations compared to PMSMs, which is the main
reason why BLDCMs are not suitable for high-performance
servo applications.
There are two sources for the harmonic torque components.
One is the motor, and the other is the combined inverter [1]. To
get ideally smooth torque output, both the two sources should
be designed perfectly, which is impossible to achieve due to
BLDCMs intrinsic characteristics. However, a lot of efforts
have been made to reduce the torque ripple of BLDCMs. Most
of them concentrated on the reduction of commutation torque
ripple, which is BLDCMs unique drawback. Carlson and
Lajoie-Mazenc pointed out that the torque ripple waveform is
different at low speed working and high speed working [2].
Murai et al proposed a method to give the on-going phase a
head start [3]. Cros adjusted the voltage amplitude to a critical
value by PWM during [4]. Ki-Yong proposed a method to
reduce the torque ripple by varying the input voltage based on
circuit analysis in [5]. Besides, some papers discussed the
current sensor techniques and current loops effect on BLDC
motor driving [6-12]. Unfortunately, all the proposed methods
are either too parameter sensitive or too complex. BLDCM still
cannot reach the torque smoothness level of PMSMs.
In this paper, the main objective is to realize a low cost
BLDC motor driving system with better performance than the
conventional drive strategy. First, the source of the torque
ripples in BLDCM is analyzed. Then, different phase current

978-1-4244-1718-6/08/$25.00 2008 IEEE

sampling techniques are listed and compared. Finally a

method to reduce the torque ripple using a single current sensor
and an analog current closed-loop is presented. For this
experiment, a BLDC motor prototype with concentrated
windings and 3 different tooth widths is designed. The
experimental results verify the effectiveness of this drive
strategy.
II. TORQUE RIPPLE ANALYSIS IN BLDC MOTORS
As described in [1], ripple torque of BLDC motors consist
of three components: cogging torque, reluctance torque and
mutual torque. Cogging torque is a common shortcoming in
permanent magnet motors. Proper motor design can minimize
it. PM motors with surface mounted magnets dont have
reluctance torque. In this paper, the reluctance torque is
neglected. The main component of BLDCMs output torque is
the mutual torque, which is caused by the interaction between
the back EMF and the current excitation. Neglecting cogging
torque, the instantaneous torque is:

T = (ia ea + ib eb + ic ec )

(1)

Where ia, ib, ic are the phase currents of A, B, C phase, ea, eb,
ec are the phase back EMF, is the motors electric angel
speed.
It is well known that the excitation waveforms for threephase trapezoidal BLDCM take the form of square wave
current waveforms with 120 conduction interval. Ideal torque
generation needs at least 120 wide range flat-tap phase back
EMF and 120 rectangular current waveform. Although the
phase currents are expected to flow in only two phase windings
at any given instant, at each discrete commutation instant, there
is a short interval that current flows in all three phases. This is
because the phase currents cannot decay to zero nor rise to an
expected value in no time due to the existence of winding
inductance and the finitude of voltage source. So at these
moments, the torque output is related to all three phases.
Usually, the non-commutation phase cannot remain constant,
with either a spike or a dip, due to different decay time and rise
time of the other two commutation phases, as shown in Fig.1
(more details in [2]). Hence, torque ripple happens at each
commutation instant.

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T
iA

iB

iA

iB

iC

iC

Fig.1. Phase current and torque during commutation interval.

(a) at low speed. (b) at a special speed.

III. METHODS OF TORQUE RIPPLE REDUCTION

In many servo applications, the inverter must be controlled
with a fast current closed-loop to realize real-time torque
control because the torque is proportional to the effective
current amplitude. Motor phase currents are regulated with
PWM by referring to the error between the current reference
command i* and the detected phase currents that are measured
from the dc link current sensor. Considering the advantage of
simplicity and cost over PMSMs, practical BLDCM drives
usually dont have a current closed-loop. But if a low cost
current loop could be adopted, the BLDCM drive will surly
have a better torque performance without depressing the cost
advantage too much.

of this method is collecting both the freewheeling current

through the antiparallel freewheeling diode and the DC link
current, so it will not lose any current information during a
PWM period. Because the phase back EMF is trapezoidal, not
ideal square wave, the freewheeling current in the closing
phase is still a torque source. So the entire current information
indicates more accurate torque.
This current sensor is easy to realize using a Hall effect
current sensor. With the development of power electronics,
nowadays many power switches have integrated antiparallel
diodes, so the circuit connection in Fig.4 cannot be realized
directly. One solution to disable this integrated diode is adding
6 extra diodes in series with the switches, which is shown in
Fig.5. Of course, choosing a new type of power switch without
integrated diode is a more convenient solution.

Fig. 3. Single DC link current sensor with additional inductance for BLDCM
described in [11].

Fig. 2. Single DC link current sensor

The most appealing current sampling method for BLDCM is

using only one current sensor. The easiest method is using a
DC link current sensor, as shown in Fig.2. This current sensor
works well except during the commutation intervals, because it
may lose information of the freewheeling current which flows
entirely in the inverter bridge, but not the DC link. This
information losing is fatal in current loop. Moreover, the
current waveform varies a lot with different PWM strategies
used in the inverter.
Reference [11] proposed a modified DC link current sensor,
as shown in Fig.3. It adds an inductance in the upper DC bus to
stabilize the current flowing through the current sensor during
a PWM period. Although it is helpful to evaluate the phase
current with no need of any PWM strategy information, the
existence of inductance tends to prevent the desired current
regulation in phases. So this method is not suitable for current
loop.
Another current sensor proposed in [10] also works well at
any instant despite what PWM strategy is used. The key theory

Fig.4. An improved single current sensor technique for BLDCM

Fig.5. Method to disable the integrated diodes of switch devices.

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With the improved single current sensor technique in Fig.4, a

new BLDCM drive configuration is shown in Fig.6. Compared
to the conventional three steps, six states BLDC drive
configuration, the new scheme only adds a current loop and a
current sensor. Because the drive for BLDCM doesnt need
vector transformation, a simple analog PID controller is
enough. Complex processor, such as DSP or FPGA, is not
needed. This is an attractive feature for BLDCM drive with
current control. The parameters of an analog PID controller
are easy to adjust. Actually a PI controller is enough for most
cases.
Udc

Inverter

BLDC

Fig.7. Cross section of the designed prototype motor

Current Loop

PWM

Commutation
Logic

Position
Sensor

Fig. 6. BLDC drive scheme with current control

IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Proper motor design is very important for a goodperformance BLDCM drive. In this paper, a 300W, 280V
prototype BLDCM is optimized and designed for the torque
ripple minimization research, with the aim of achieving as low
as possible cogging torque and as wide as possible phase back
EMF flat-top. Normal method to reduce the cogging torque
tends to weaken the flat-top range of back EMF, such as using
concentrated windings. The cross section of the motor is shown
in Fig.7. It has 8 poles, 6 coils, 12 slots, and 3 different slots.
This particular structure is easy to produce, without the need of
skewing which will highly raise the cost. Its phase back-EMF
test waveform is shown in Fig.8, which has over 115 degree
flat-top phase back EMF. This motor has low cogging torque
amplitude of 0.05Nm, according to FEM simulation.
The main parameters of the prototype are shown in TABLE I.

Fig.8 Phase back EMF vs. time

Fig.9 shows the phase current at a low speed of 115rpm,

with conventional control scheme. The amplitude of the current
is about 1.3A. Fig.10 shows the phase current at the same
speed with current control, with 15kHz PWM carrier frequency.
It can be seen that after the current regulation with a PI
controller, the current has a much more flat waveform.
At low speed, this kind of current controller can work as
expected, but it will encounter a saturation problem at high
speed duo to the finite voltage supply and higher phase back
EMF.

TABLE I
PARAMETERS OF THE EXPERIMENTAL MOTOR

Parameters
Phase resistance
Phase inductance
Rated phase current
Rated speed
Maximum speed
Rated torque
Pole pairs

Value
1.5

11mH
1.3A
3000rpm
6000rpm
1.2Nm
4
Fig.9. Phase current without current sensor

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PEDS '99. Proceedings of the IEEE 1999 International Conference on,

1999, pp. 133-138 vol.1.
[12] C. D. French, P. P. Acarnley, and A. G. Jack, "Real-time current
estimation in brushless DC drives using a single," in Power Electronics
and Applications, 1993., Fifth European Conference on, 1993, pp. 445450 vol.4.

Fig.10 Phase current with current sensor

V. CONCLUSION
A low cost, higher performance BLDC motor drive system
has been proposed. To sample the phase current at any instant,
an effective single current sensor technique without the need
for information of current PWM strategy or current sign has
been adopted. A simple drive circuit with additional current
close-loop has been realized. Compared to the conventional
BLDC drive scheme, it is not complicated too much. A
prototype BLDC motor with nearly 120 flat-top back EMF
and low amplitude of cogging torque has been designed. The
experimental results show that the current waveform is
improved at low speed. This simple drive system can improve
the torque performance of BLDC motor drives.
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