Although the concept of variable-speed drives, based on utilization of multiphase machines, dates back to the late 1960s, it was not until the mid- to late 1990s that multiphase drives became serious contenders for various applications. These include electric ship propulsion, locomotive traction, electric and hybrid electric vehicles, ldquomore-electricrdquo aircraft, and high-power industrial applications. As a consequence, there has been a substantial increase in the interest for such drive systems worldwide, resulting in a huge volume of work published during the last ten years. An attempt is made in this paper to provide a brief review of the current state of the art in the area. After addressing the reasons for potential use of multiphase rather than three-phase drives and the available approaches to multiphase machine designs, various control schemes are surveyed. This is followed by a discussion of the multiphase voltage source inverter control. Various possibilities for the use of additional degrees of freedom that exist in multiphase machines are further elaborated. Finally, multiphase machine applications in electric energy generation are addressed.

Multiphase Electric Machines for Variable-Speed Applications

The area of multiphase variable-speed motor drives in general and multiphase induction motor drives in particular has experienced a substantial growth since the beginning of this century. Research has been conducted worldwide and numerous interesting developments have been reported in the literature. An attempt is made to provide a detailed overview of the current state-of-the-art in this area. The elaborated aspects include advantages of multiphase induction machines, modelling of multiphase induction machines, basic vector control and direct torque control schemes and PWM control of multiphase voltage source inverters. The authors also provide a detailed survey of the control strategies for five-phase and asymmetrical six-phase induction motor drives, as well as an overview of the approaches to the design of fault tolerant strategies for post-fault drive operation, and a discussion of multiphase multi-motor drives with single inverter supply. Experimental results, collected from various multiphase induction motor drive laboratory rigs, are also included to facilitate the understanding of the drive operation.

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Multiphase induction motor drives - : a technology status review

This paper addresses to some of the latest contributions on the application of Finite Control Set Model Predictive Control (FCS-MPC) in Power Electronics. In FCS-MPC , the switching states are directly applied to the power converter, without the need of an additional modulation stage. The paper shows how the use of FCS-MPC provides a simple and efficient computational realization for different control objectives in Power Electronics. Some applications of this technology in drives, active filters, power conditioning, distributed generation and renewable energy are covered. Finally, attention is paid to the discussion of new trends in this technology and to the identification of open questions and future research topics.

State of the Art of Finite Control Set Model Predictive Control in Power Electronics

This paper presents an overview of motor drive technologies used for safety-critical aerospace applications, with a particular focus placed on the choice of candidate machines and their drive topologies. Aircraft applications demand high reliability, high availability, and high power density while aiming to reduce weight, complexity, fuel consumption, operational costs, and environmental impact. New electric driven systems can meet these requirements and also provide significant technical and economic improvements over conventional mechanical, hydraulic, or pneumatic systems. Fault-tolerant motor drives can be achieved by partitioning and redundancy through the use of multichannel three-phase systems or multiple single-phase modules. Analytical methods are adopted to compare caged induction, reluctance, and PM motor technologies and their relative merits. The analysis suggests that the dual (or triple) three-phase PMAC motor drive may be a favored choice for general aerospace applications, striking a balance between necessary redundancy and undue complexity, while maintaining a balanced operation following a failure. The modular single-phase approach offers a good compromise between size and complexity but suffers from high total harmonic distortion of the supply and high torque ripple when faulted. For each specific aircraft application, a parametrical optimization of the suitable motor configuration is needed through a coupled electromagnetic and thermal analysis, and should be verified by finite-element analysis.

Overview of Electric Motor Technologies Used for More Electric Aircraft (MEA)

This paper presents a comprehensive study on the state-of-the-art and emerging wind energy technologies from the electrical engineering perspective. In an attempt to decrease cost of energy, increase the wind energy conversion efficiency, reliability, power density, and comply with the stringent grid codes, the electric generators and power electronic converters have emerged in a rigorous manner. From the market based survey, the most successful generator-converter configurations are addressed along with few promising topologies available in the literature. The back-to-back connected converters, passive generator-side converters, converters for multiphase generators, and converters without intermediate dc-link are investigated for high-power wind energy conversion systems (WECS), and presented in low and medium voltage category. The onshore and offshore wind farm configurations are analyzed with respect to the series/parallel connection of wind turbine ac/dc output terminals, and high voltage ac/dc transmission. The fault-ride through compliance methods used in the induction and synchronous generator based WECS are also discussed. The past, present and future trends in megawatt WECS are reviewed in terms of mechanical and electrical technologies, integration to power systems, and control theory. The important survey results, and technical merits and demerits of various WECS electrical systems are summarized by tables. The list of current and future wind turbines are also provided along with technical details.

High-Power Wind Energy Conversion Systems: State-of-the-Art and Emerging Technologies

Multilevel inverter supplied multiphase variable-speed drive systems have in recent times started attracting more attention, due to various advantages that they offer when compared to the standard three-phase two-level drives. For proper functioning of such systems good pulsewidth modulation (PWM) strategy is of crucial importance. Control complexity of multiphase multilevel inverters increases rapidly with an increase in the number of phases and the number of levels. This paper deals with a three-level neutral point clamped (NPC) inverter supplied five-phase induction motor drive and analyses five PWM strategies: three are carrier-based (CBPWM) and two are space vector based (SVPWM). The aim is to provide a detailed comparison and thus conclude on pros and cons of each solution, providing a guideline for the selection of the most appropriate PWM technique. Experimental results are provided for all analysed PWM methods. The comparison of the PWM techniques is given in terms of the voltage and current waveforms and spectra, as well as the total harmonic distortion (THD) in a whole linear modulation index range, which is used as the global figure of merit. Properties of the common mode voltage (CMV) are also investigated. Complexity of the algorithms, in terms of the computational time requirements and memory consumption, is addressed as well. It is shown that the performance of the PWM techniques is very similar and that one CBPWM and one SVPWM technique are characterised with identical performance. However, using the algorithm complexity as the main criterion, space vector techniques are more involved.

A Comparison of Carrier-Based and Space Vector PWM Techniques for Three-Level Five-Phase Voltage Source Inverters

Open-end winding three-phase drive topologies have been extensively investigated in the last two decades. In the majority of cases supply of the inverters at the two sides of the winding is provided from isolated dc sources. Recently, studies related to multiphase open-end winding drives have also been conducted, using isolated dc sources at the two winding sides. This paper investigates for the first time a five-phase open-end winding configuration, which is obtained by connecting a two-level five-phase inverter at each side of the stator winding, with both inverters supplied from a common dc source. In such a configuration it is essential to eliminate the common-mode voltage (CMV) that is inevitably created by usual PWM techniques. Based on the vector space decomposition (VSD), the switching states that create zero CMV are identified and plotted. A space vector pattern with large redundancy of switching states is obtained. Suitable space vectors are then selected to realize the required voltage reference at the machine terminals with zero CMV. The large number of redundant states enables some freedom in the choice of switching states to impress these space vectors. Out of numerous possibilities, two particular switching sequences are chosen for further investigation. Both are implemented in an experimental setup, and the results are presented and discussed.

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A Space Vector PWM With Common-Mode Voltage Elimination for Open-End Winding Five-Phase Drives With a Single DC Supply

Multiphase variable-speed drives, supplied from two-level voltage source inverters (VSIs), are nowadays considered for various industrial applications. Although numerous pulsewidth modulation (PWM) schemes for multiphase VSIs, aimed at sinusoidal output voltage generation, have been developed, no detailed analysis of the impact of these modulation schemes on the output current ripple has ever been reported. This paper presents a comprehensive analytical analysis and comparison of the output current ripple caused by the application of three different continuous PWM schemes, using a five-phase VSI as an example. Main properties of sinusoidal PWM, fifth harmonic injection PWM, and space vector PWM are elaborated and analyzed using the harmonic flux concept. Space vector theory is applied in the analysis. As a result, harmonic distortion factors are obtained for each PWM scheme. Theoretical considerations are verified by simulations and experimental investigation using a custom-designed five-phase VSI-fed induction motor drive.

Analysis of Output Current Ripple rms in Multiphase Drives Using Space Vector Approach

Two-level multiphase voltage source inverters (VSIs) are typically used as the supply for multiphase machines. Such machines are often with concentrated winding in which case, certain low-order stator current harmonics are injected to provide torque enhancement. Also, a multimotor drive system can be realized by connecting a number of multiphase machines in series, using phase transposition while supplying the whole system from a single multiphase VSI. In both situations, it is important to know the limits of the inverter operation in the linear modulation region. This paper develops a simple method that enables analytical determination of the boundaries of the linear modulation region for all multiphase inverters with a prime number of phases. The limits are independent of the actual pulse width modulation (PWM) method utilized, and are equally applicable to both carrier-based and space vector PWM techniques. Theoretical considerations are verified experimentally using the five-phase and seven-phase VSI rigs.

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Analytical Determination of DC-Bus Utilization Limits in Multiphase VSI Supplied AC Drives

Multiphase variable-speed drives, supplied from two-level voltage-source inverters (VSIs), are nowadays considered for various industrial applications. Depending on the drive structure and/or the motor design, the VSI is required to generate either sinusoidal voltages or voltages that contain a certain number of sinusoidal components (ldquomultifrequency output voltagesrdquo). The existing space vector pulsewidth-modulation (SVPWM) schemes are based on selection of (n-1) active space vectors (for odd phase numbers) within a switching period and they yield either sinusoidal voltage or sinusoidal fundamental voltage in combination with a limited amount of other harmonic terms. This paper develops a SVPWM scheme, which enables multifrequency output voltage generation with arbitrary values of various sinusoidal components in the output voltage. The method is based on initial selection of (n-1)2/2 active space vectors within a switching period, instead of the common (n-1) active vectors. By properly arranging the sequence of the vector application, it is possible to provide an automatic postreduction of the number of applied active vectors to (n-1), thus maintaining the same switching frequency as with the existing schemes while simultaneously avoiding the limiting on the generated sinusoidal output voltage components. Theoretical considerations are detailed using a five-phase VSI. The experimental verification is provided using a five-phase two-motor series-connected induction motor drive, supplied from a custom-designed five-phase DSP-controlled VSI.

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Martin Jones

Papers

A Comparison of Carrier-Based and Space Vector PWM Techniques for Three-Level Five-Phase Voltage Source Inverters

A Space Vector PWM With Common-Mode Voltage Elimination for Open-End Winding Five-Phase Drives With a Single DC Supply

Analysis of Output Current Ripple rms in Multiphase Drives Using Space Vector Approach

Analytical Determination of DC-Bus Utilization Limits in Multiphase VSI Supplied AC Drives

A Space Vector PWM Scheme for Multifrequency Output Voltage Generation With Multiphase Voltage-Source Inverters