Rotor Time Constant Identification in Vector Controlled

Induction Motor Applied Flux Model Reference

Adaptive System (MRAS)
M.Jemli (0,M.Boussak (2), M.Gossa (1) and A.Chabri (1)
(1) Ecole Normale Suphieure de 1'Enseignement Technique (ENSET) de Tunis
5 AV.Taha Hussein, 1008 Tunis (BM) Montfleury
(2) Ecole Sup6rieured'Ing6nieurs de Marseille (ESIM)
IMT - Technopjle de Chateau Gombert - 13451 Mafieille cedex 20 - France

- Nowadays, Indirect Field-Oriented Control (IFOC)

technique brought on a renaissance in modem high-performance
control of PWM inverter fed induction motor drives. This method
requires the actual value of the rotor time constant which is used to
calculate the magnitude and the position of the rotor flux. This value
widely varies with rotor temperature and flux level of the machine. So,
The quality of the drive system decreases if no means for compensation
or identification is applied. This paper describes a rotor time constant
identification method in order to update control gains of a vector
controlled induction motor. A flux Model Reference Adaptive System
(MRAS)is used to estimate the inverse rotor time constant by only
using measurements of the stator voltages and currents and rotor speed
of an induction motor. The estimate rotor time constant is used as
feedback in a vector speed control system for voltage-controlled pulse
width modulation (PWM) inverter fed induction motor. The proposed
method identify the inverse rotor time constant with a good accuracy at
any load and speed references. Simulation results point out the validity
of our proposed method.
Absrracr

INTRODUCIION
A simple open-loop volt
control method has been popularly used
for a long time. It will c%nue to be used in the future for lowperformance, low power, and cost-effective indusmal drives. In a
"scalar" control method, poles and zeros of machine transfer functions
vary at each operationg point because of the nonlinearity of the machine
model and the inherent coupling effect between the direct and
quadrature axes. For high performance application, field oriented or
vector control techniques, developed in the early 1970's, are used to
eliminate the coupling problems between the d and q axes, then an ac
machine will behave like a separatly excited dc machine and therefore
fast transient response are obtained and the conventional stability limit
of the induction motor are eliminated.
Since the introduction of the microcomputer by Intel Corporation in
1971, the technology has gone through intense evolution in the control
of power electronics and drives. Microcomputers permit simplification
of control hardware (thus reducing size and cost), improve reliability,
and eliminate drift problems and made possible the U= of vector
control techniques (called Field-Oriented Control (FOC)) for induction
motor in high-performance applications. This control methods has
found wide acceptance in applications such as paper mills, textile mills,
steel rolling mills, machine tools and robotics, where the system has to
be robust or isensitive to parameter variations and load disturbance.
There are two varieties of vector control. The first variety proposed
by Blaschke is the Direct Field-Oriented Control (DFOC) or feedback
method. This method use direct measurement of the air-gap flux vector
by means of special sensors. In spite of it's accuracy and it's
insensitivity to variations in machine parameters, the application of this
technique remains limited on the sensor-flux equipped induction
machines and the harmful effect of harmonic noise in feedback signal
processing therefore the method is difficult to use near zero speed.
In the second variety, developped by Hasse and called Indirect FieldOriented Control (IFOC) or feedforward method. The rotor flux is
estimated f m the stator current vector, voltage vector, rotor speed and
machine parameters. So, this method is more sensitive to variations in
machine parameters. In order to have decoupling between the rotor flux
and torque component of current, it is necessary to know: with good
accuracy the machine parameters especially the rotor time constant wich
widely varies with rotor temperature, skin effect and flux level of the
machine.

0-7803-1772-6/94/$3.00 @ 1994 IEBE

Attemps are made to enhance the IFOC of PWM inverter fed

induction motor drives by parameter identification. Recently, much
attention has been given to the rotor time constant identification
problem and several publications have been presented in this field.
However, the rotor time constant identification problem remains a
challenge.
Chan C. et al. [SI proposed a rotor resistance identification based on
the proper selection of coordinate axes, namely the a-axis of the
rotating frame is set to be coicident with the stator current vector.
The method proposed by Matsuo et al. [9] where they injects a
prescribed negative sequence current perturbation signal and detects the
corresponding negative sequence voltage. This technique requires
additional hardware and can induce a strong second harmonic torque
pulsation due to the interaction of the positive and negative rotating
components of mmf.
Tamai' et al. [ 111 proposed the application of the model reference
Adaptive System to the rotor resistance identification of induction
machine equiped with x m h coils wound closed to the stator winding.
A concept to measure the rotor time constant in real-time using a
Kalman filter was proposed by zdi and Lip0 [12]. The method is
limited to situations where the load conditions are changing slowly and
also requires minimum of about 5% of rated speed and above.
Boussak et al. [2] have proposed another on-line rotor time constant
identification applying Recursive Least Squares ( U S )approach with
variable forgetting factor based on measurment of the stator voltages
and currents and the rotor speed. Recently [3],[4], they have proposed
a method based on M R A S which is a promissing method to estimate
with good accuracy the rotor time constant. This contribution has to be
considered as a base of our works in order to improve the accuracy of
the rotor time constant identification in vector controlled induction
motor drive.
NmATIONS
: state space stator, rotor voltage vector,
: state space stator, rotor current vector,
: state space rotor flux vectot,
:stator, rotor electrical angular velocity,
:shaft electrical speed,
:shaft dative position in synchronous reference frame,
:diffmtial operator or Laplace operator,
:complex mot of unity,
:mechanical rotor angular velocity,
: pole-pair number,
:d q axis rotor flux,
: d-q axis stator current,
:load torque,
:total in:friction coefficient

Pmmneters:

4,
4,

M
T,

797

:stator, rotor resistance,

:stator, ID^ Self-inductance,
:mutual inductance,
:rota time constant,

P,

:inverse rotor time constant,

Rotor-flux observers

: leakage coefficient,

From the equations (4) and (5). we can extract two expressions of
the complex rotor flux. The first derives from the stator equation and
the second from rotor equation.

s,

: estimate inverse rotor time constant.

VECTOR CONTROL OF INDUCTION MACHINE

-From stator equation:

The Indirect Field-Oriented Control (IFOC) system for Voltageregulated Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) inverter-fed three phase
induction motor with squirrel-cage rotor or with a short-circuited
wound rotor was well developed in Jemli [6] and it's block basic
scheme is given in figure 1.
The dynamic behaviour of the induction motor is described in a d-q-o
reference frame rotating synchronously with the rotor flux. The rotor
flux is in line with the d-axis. The command references: stator currents
1; and I:, and the slip angular frequency u:,are defined by:

(9)
0; is the rotor flux-stator observation.
-From rotor equation:

9;=

s +P,

MP,

+ j ( u - a,)-"

9;is the rotor flux-rotor observation.

)'
I'd r --a
2

M (at steady state)

The P, parameter exists only in the complex rotor flux-rotor

observation. The rotor flux-stator observation can be obtained by a
single integration from equation (9) and it leads from rotor observation
as a first order differential equation solution.

(3)

Rotor time constant (MRAS)identification

In this paper we propose the application of MRAS to identify the
rotor time constant of a vector controlled induction motor by using the
output error betwween the module of the rotor flux observations
(figure 2).

I
Figure 1: Block basic scheme of indirect-field
oriented control system.
If the value of /3, used in (3) deviates from the real value, the
decoupling control of the flux and the torque will be lost and the
indirect field oriented control will not be completed successefully. So,
it is necessary to proceed with an on-line rotor time constant
identification.
E

ROTOR TIME CONSTANT IDENTIFICATION

Adaptation
Mechanism

Modeling of inductionmotor
The dynamic model of a three-phase induction motor with a squirrelcage rotor or with a short-circuited wound rotor can be defined by
vector equations expressed in d-q reference frame, synchronously
rotating with electrical angular velocity m, by:

(4) is the stator equation

(5) is the rotor equation

# r = L l r +MLr
Ls = idr

+j

iqs

Digital Estimator System

L------------------------------------------------------------------~

Fgure 2: Bloc scheme of (MRAS) for rotor time constant estimation

Two independant rotor-flux observers are built to estimate the rotor

flux vector, the fist from stator equation (9) and the second from rotor
equation (10).The stator equation does not contain the P, parameter
and it's observer is considered as a reference model of the induction
machine. The rotor equation depends on the/?, parameter and it's
,observeris considered as an adjustable model.

/3, and P, are both time varying and each may be

seen as an input to the rotor equation (10). To investigate the dynamic
response of the MRAS rotor time constant identification, it is necessary
to linearize the stator and rotor equations for small deviation around a
working point. So, the deviations of the error E are described by the
following linearized expression:

; The parameters

798

and the m s f e r t function relating A& to AP, is expressed by:

-=
AE

(s+

P r o ) [ M(Cg&olbo + C g ~ 0 1 q ~ o ) - l C g o 1 2 ]

Where, at steady state:

Rotor time
Constant Estimato

Figure 4: Bloc scheme of indirect field oriented controlled induction

machine with rotor time constant MRAS estimation.

The closed loop diagram of the dynamic response of MRAS rotor

time constant identification can be built as follow:

between the module of the stator and the rotor observations of the
rotor flux reaches a maximum at transient state then converges to a
practically nul value ( 0.008 wb ). The estimator is tested for low speed
200 rpm (figure 6) and high speed 300Orpm (figure 7). Simulation
results show the good stability and accuracy of the estimator under any
load condition and any speed condition.

Figure 3: Closed -loop diagram of the dynamic response of MRAS

IDENTIFIER SIMULATION
The msfert function H(s) admits two complex poles:
sl = -P,o

duo- mr0)

sz = -P,o - j ( w o- ur0)

(15)

(16)

Owing to the fact that p,, is always positive, The poles s, and s, are
with negative real parts . So, the H(s) stability is confirmed. The PI
regulator is justified by the fact that the estimator has to perform no
error at steady state and to converge in 'a reasonable bandwidth
compared to the dynamics speed response. Then the values of Kpl =
120 and K,,= 300 are a good compromise.
I The vector control is obtained by speed measurement and flux
estimation. The torque and flux current references are expressed in a
synchronously rotating d-q frame. The slip frequency reference w:, is
obtained from torque reference current 1; , rotor flux and rotor time
constant estimation (figure 4).
The simulation is camed by starting the vector controlled drive to
reach 1000 rpm at no-load, applying the rated torque at 0.5s and
reversing the speed reference at 0.75s with the same torque module
(figure 5). The time response of the drive is 0.16s while, the estimator
converges in 0.15s. The load torque adds only a small transient
perturbation on the estimation. When the speed reverses at 0.75s a
same delay for convergence can be noted.
The speed overshoot observed in the fist transient at time t = 0 is
explained by the fact that the flux is not yet initialised. The error

799

:R

.5

Figure 5. Inverse rotor time constant estimation.

a:

speed control, real value (full line), reference value (dashed line)
b estimation, estimate (full line), real value (dashed line)
c: e"between stator and rotor-flux observations
d: error between real and estimate value of p.
K , = 0.6 K, = 10 K,, = 120 Ki,= 300

Ratedvoltagc: 38OV-w)Hz
Rateedp~wer: 4kw
148Orpm
Numbexofpolepairs :
2
Ratedspeed:
R,: 1 . 2 0
R,: l a L,: 0.1568H L,: 0.1554H
M: 0.15 H
I, bounded:
f 9.8 A
I, bounded: f 30 A
Total ineniak 0.013 kg m2 Friction coeficientf: 0.002 Nms/rad

W r C rd/s)

CONCLUSION
Indirect field orienred control induction motor drive system are
presently concidered as viable altematives for replacing DC motor
drives. However, the variation of rotor time constant has amost
impanant effect on the performance of the drive. The major effect is to
destroy the decoupled condition of the rotor flux and the torque.
Therefore, the on-line identification of the rotor time constant is
to high-performance of the AC drive systems.
In this paper, the sensitivity to the rotor time constant variation is
analysed and a compensation method is proposed. The proposed
compensation method is based on flux model reference adaptive system
(MRAS). The identification method proposed in this paper is valid in
the steady-state and m s i e n t s operation. The method produces desired
result under all operating conditions of the machine including the
operation under any speed range and any load condition. This
technique gives good stability and accuracy to estimate the rotor time
constant and to improve the induction motor drive systems.
In practice situation, we use a PWM inverter as a voltage source, a
little identification error is caused by high harmonics, but this is
reduced when the carrier frequency is increased.

Figure 6. Inverse rotor time constant estimation at low speed control

a: speed control, real value (full line), reference value (dashed line)
b: estimation, estimate (full line), real value (dashed line).
K, = 0.6 K, = 10 K,, = 120 K,,= 300

REFERENCES
W r < rd/s)

Figure 7. Inverse rotor time constant estimation at high speed control

a: speed control, real value (full line), reference value (dashed line)
b: estimation, estimate (full line),real value (dashed line).
K, = 0.6 K,= 10 K,, = 120 K,,= 300
The K,, K, are the values of the PI speed regulator and the K,, , K,,
are the values of the PI regulator applied to the rotor constant estimator.

Appendix
The machine peramacff am:

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800