A New Current Model Flux Observer Insensitive to Rotor Time Constant and Rotor

Speed for DFO Control of Induction Machine

Habib-ur Rehman Mustafa K. Guven Adnan Derdiyok Longya Xu

Department of Electrical Engineering

The Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio 43210

Abstract:Direct Field Orientation (DFO) control f o r an
induction machine is designed and implemented using a
new sliding mode technique based current model flux ob-
server. A close loop flux observer, based o n the current
estimate error is constructed. The flux and current ob-
servers include a sliding function, which is derivative of
the flux. Therefore, when the estimated current converges
to the measured one, the sliding function itself is integratedconstant, and at the same time can perform comparable
to calculate the flux magnitude and angle. The flux angle
is then used f o r the D F O control. The flux observer in this
technique does not require any knowledge of the rotor time
constant and the machine speed because both are included
in the sliding mode function, thus making the proposed ob-
server completely insensitive to any error in the rotor time flux from the motor terminal quantities (stator voltages
constant or the machine speed information. Simulation
and experimental results are presented to show the perfor-
mance of the proposed observer f o r the D F O control of an model flux observer [6, 71 is sensitive to the stator resis-
induction motor drive system.
I. Introduction
Indirect Field Orientation (IFO) and direct field orien-
tation control are the two most commonly used techniques
for high performance induction machine drive systems. An
IF0 is synthesized by properly controlling the slip fre-
quency, a necessary and sufficient condition for the field
orientation. However, an IF0 is very sensitive to the ma-
chine parameters, especially the rotor time constant (TT).
This is because the slip calculator is feedforward open loop
control by its nature. The effect of the deviation of T, from
its actual value to the command value has been studied in
[I, 21.
An on-line adaptation of the rotor time constant is nec-
essary to keep the machine field oriented. Many on-line
identification schemes have been designed [3]-[5]. These
methods have provided some improvements, but are quite
complex because they either require more parameters, or
have hardware complications. DFO on the other hand is a
feedback controller which is not sensitive to the rotor time
to IFO. Therefore, the focus of this paper is to design a
robust DFO drive system.
DFO, as the name suggests, makes direct use of rotor flux
information. The most practical approach, for the DFO
control implementation is carried out by estimating the
and currents) without adding flux sensors or additional
hardware. This flux estimation, when using the voltage
tance and leakage inductance, and will also have difficulties
at low speed due to integration. The current model flux
observer is an alternative approach to overcome the prob-
lems of leakage inductance and stator resistance at low
speed. However, it does not work well at high speed due
to its sensitivity to rotor resistance. Jason [8, 91 combined
the best accuracy attributes of the voltage model and cur-
rent model flux observers and designed a close loop flux
observer which provides an automatic transition between
the two most desirable open-loop flux observer models:
the current model at low frequency to the voltage model
at high frequency. Problems of the stator resistance and
the rotor time constant variation are reduced, but not yet
completely eliminated, also an accurate speed information
is necessary for this technique.
This paper proposes a sliding mode observer for rotor flux
and current estimation. A close loop observer based on the

0-7803-7067-8/01/$10.00 02001 IEEE 1179

current estimate error is designed and implemented. The
derivative of the flux observer is equal to the designed slid-
ing mode function. Therefore, when the current estimate
error reaches zero, the sliding mode function can be inte-
grated t o calculate the flux. The proposed observer does
not require any speed information and is completely in-
sensitive to the rotor time constant, thus can work very
well both a t low and high speeds.
11. Proposed Current Model Flux Observer
The induction machine model, with the stator currents
and rotor fluxes defined as the state variables, in the sta-
tionary a , L,3 coordinate system can be written as:
1 Lm 1 1 L,
I,, = --- ,A,
0Ls Lr Tr
+ --wrApr-
0Ls Lr
The machine model and the matrix S are presented in this
form with a specific purpose in mind. It can be seen that
the matrix S appears both in the current and flux equa-
tions of the machine. The current and flux equations by
their nature have an advantage that the coupling terms
between Q and ,O axes, both in the current and the flux
equations are exactly the same. That is why the coupling
terms can be replaced with the same sliding function both
in current and flux observers.
The current observer can be designed by replacing the ma-
trix S with the proposed sliding function *,or in current
equation (1):
and the equation for the flux observer can be written from
equation (2) as:

1
f f L , (RS +
- &-) I,, 1
+ --&vas

where

!Par = -uosign(sas), !Por = -u,sign(sp,)

and

Which can be represented in the matrix form as:

I,,,, fopsand I,,,
Io, are the observed and measured stator
current components respectively.
“Once the estimated current converges to measured one,
the flux estimation is a mere integration of the sliding
mode function without requiring a n y knowledge of the ma-
chine parameters or speed. ” This is a salient feature of the
flux observer proposed in this paper.
Two independent sliding functions, !POTand !Pp., are de-
where signed for the Q and ,B axes of the current observer re-
k3Lm R, 1
k1 = - , h=-, k3=--, spectively. These sliding functions are based on the er-
Lr ffLS ffL,
ror between the measured and estimated phase current.
rJ=1-- L2, q = l/Tr = R,/L,, Therefore, the designed current and flux observers for the
LsLr ’ Q and ,B axes have no coupling between them. On the
T, is the rotor time constant and w, is the rotor electrical contrary, in the real machine equations we can see that
speed. Next define a matrix S as: there exists a coupling between the a and ,L3 axes of the
current and flux equations. Especially in flux equations,
the flux along the Q axis is a function of flux along the

1180
,6 axis and vice versa. The sliding mode function, when Which implies that V < 0 if
substituted into the observer equations, makes the current
and the flux observer models totally decoupled. With this
sliding mode function a and axes currents are estimated
based on their self current errors i.e., the error between where
the observed and the measured current. A =v L T + + VLrnIas
w T X ~ T
The close loop current observer uses the measured current
as feedback. As a result, there is no offset or drift problem B =v X ~ T -w T L T + VLrnIps,
in the current observer. In the flux equations there can By selecting large enough U, (found by the existence condi-
be an offset because of the integration, but that is taken tion) the sliding mode (s, = 0) will occur. Solving s, = 0
care of by using a low pass filter. When the estimation for the discontinuity term yields the continuous equivalent
error trajectories reach the sliding surface (s, = 0) then, control. However, the resulting equivalent control will de-
from (5) it is obvious that the observed currents will con- pend on machine parameters and will be difficult to im-
verge to the actual currents ( I,, = Ias and Ips = Ips). plement. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that equiv-
It is important to point out that this sliding surface equa- alent control is close to the slow component of the real
tion selection guarantees that on the sliding surface, the control that can be derived by filtering out the high fre-
observer will not be effected by any system parameter or quency components using a low-pass filter. The low-pass
disturbance (i.e. the current observer is invariant). filter structure is implemented with

- 1
A. Observer Stability Analysis 'ZOT - qCYpT, (6)
The stability of the overall observer structure is guar-
where p is the time constant of the filter and should be suf-
anteed through the stability of the current observer. The
ficiently small to preserve the slow component undistorted
Lyapunov function for the proposed sliding mode current
but large enough to eliminate the high frequency compo-
observer is chosen as:
nents. The output of the low-pass filter will be equal to
1
v = -s:s,,
2
the equivalent control on the sliding surface.

where s, = [ s a s , s p s ]T . B. Flux and Position Estimation

The Lyapunov function v is positive definite. This sat- F~~~the equivalent control concept [lo], it is assumed
isfies the first Lyapunov stability condition. The second that the observed currents fa, and ips match with actual
condition is that the derivative of the sliding function must currents and ips. ~ h using , (4)and (6),
~ Equations
~
be less than zero i.e., V = SZS, < 0 with the following can be written:

Then using (1)and (3) S, can be written as Then using (4)and (7), flux can be estimated as:

r r i
[&] [ 31 =-

Note that this flux estimation is done only by using the

sliding mode function without requiring any information
Therefore,
on the right hand side of equation (7), thus making the
--uos~gn (&) proposed flux observer completely insensitive to the rotor
--uosign ( I p s ) ]- [ JT 71 [Xx
]lf time constant or the rotor speed.
i-

1181
 From the estimated flux, the flux angle can be calcu-
lated as:

--_0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5

AT = 4x2. +,A:
The estimated flux angle is then used for current trans- ” -100‘ I I I I I I I
formation from the synchronous to the stationary frame 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5

and vice versa, thus gauranting the drive under the filed “‘“I I

orientation.
I I I I I

111. Simulation and Experimental Results 0

i
+
c
2 0
c
p
-
A 5 H P induction machine and a flexible high perfor- I
1 1.5 2 2.5 3 35
mance Advanced Controller for Electric Machines (ACE) (d) lime (sec.)
are used to validate the proposed algorithm. The ACE is
a very high performance, rugged, rapid prototyping tool Figure 1: Simulation Results for a Triangular Speed
that implements advanced control algorithms and inter- Command
faces without any traditional programming. The user,
through the graphical user interface, is able to change the Figures 2 through 4 prove that the proposed observer
various reference inputs and system parameters while the structure estimates the current, flux, and angle very well
program is running in real time and observe the effects by using the designed sliding mode function. Results for
through the on-board data acquisition. The parameters of the triangular speed command show the speed tracking,
the machine, used to validate the proposed algorithm, are estimated and measured current, estimated flux and the
shown below. sliding mode function which drives the estimated current
to the measured one. Figures 3 and 4 show the proposed
220 Volts 14.8 Amps 5HP DFO control performance for a step and trapezoidal speed
Lis = Li, = 1.9mH L , = 41.2mH 1800 rpm commands. Experimental results include the estimated
R, = 0.6 iCt R, = 0.412 iCt 4 poles and measured currents plotted on the top of each other
proving the observer performance and its accuracy.

A . Simulation Results
IV. Conclusions
Figure 1 shows the simulation results for DFO control.
The command speed and speed calculated from the ma-
chine model are plotted on the top of each other in Figure A robust sliding mode current model flux observer for
l(a). Figures l(b) and (c) show that the observed current DFO control of induction machine is designed and imple-
and flux converge to those calculated from the machine mented. This observer does not require any knowledge of
model. Figure l(d) shows the sliding function, which is the machine speed and the rotor time constant because
used to estimate the current and flux. both the speed and the rotor time constant are included
in the sliding mode function. Thus the proposed observer
B. Experimental Results is not sensitive to any error in the speed information and
The designed flux observer is tested for triangular, step the rotor resistance variation, problems commonly associ-
and trapezoidal speed commands to validate the perfor- ated with the current model flux observer. The algorithm
mance of proposed DFO control. The results shown in is simple to implement and is less computation extensive.
 -10001

-
n
20
I
05 1
I

15
I

2
I

25 3
I
F
: 0 02 04 06 08 1 12 14 16 16 F
2

-B 20- I\
E
” I 1 I I I I
go
-20 I
05 1 15 2 2.5 3 ?j
! -20 -

-40I I
0 02 04 06 08 1 12 14 16 18 2

1
I

-“.U
0 05 1 1.5 2 25 3
I
” I I
a
U 0 0 02 04 06 06 1 12 14 16 18 2
C
tlme (sec:)
n

I I I I I I
05 1 15 2 25 3 Figure 3: Experimental Results for a Step Speed Com-
time(sec)
mand
Figure 2: Experimental Results for a Triangular Speed
Command

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