Implementation of advanced control schemes

using dSPACE material for teaching

induction motor drives
C. Versle, O. Deblecker, G. Bury and J. Lobry
Electrical Engineering Department, Facult Polytechnique de Mons, Belgium
E-mail: christophe.versele@fpms.ac.be

Abstract This paper describes a project in which students must implement two advanced control
schemes for a voltage-fed inverter induction motor drive, namely vector control and direct torque
control, using a dSPACE platform and a Matlab/Simulink environment. With this platform, students
can focus on these two control schemes without spending too much time on details concerning the
implementation of the control algorithms on the board.

Keywords teaching induction motor drives; vector control; direct torque control;
space vector modulation

This paper describes a project embedded in an elective course called Electric

Drives and included in the module of Power Engineering, which is, usually,
attended by students during their fourth year of a five-year electrical engineering
degree. During this project, students must implement two advanced control schemes
of a voltage-fed inverter induction motor (IM) drive, namely vector control and
direct torque control using a dSPACE platform and a Matlab/Simulink environment.
This 50-hour project is realised by teams of three students in laboratory sessions and
is also used for practical teaching in the Electrical Engineering Department of the
Facult Polytechnique de Mons in Belgium. Students who undertake this project
have already attended the Electrical Machines (in steady-state operation), the
Automation and the Power Electronics courses. They have also had six hour-long
lectures on the dynamic model of IM and the two advanced control schemes before
they begin the project. Therefore, they have all the necessary theoretical knowledge
to successfully carry out this project. On the other hand, the project greatly helps
them to understand the theoretical concepts explained during lectures.
Induction motors are well known as the workhorse of industry. However, the
torque and speed control of these motors is difficult to calculate because of their
non-linear, complex structure. In the past four decades, many advanced control
schemes have been proposed for IM drives. First, in the 1960s, the principle of speed
control was based on an IM model, but just for the steady state. Therefore these
so-called scalar control methods cannot achieve best performance during tran-
sients, which is their major drawback. In the 1970s, different control schemes were
developed based on a dynamic model of the IM. Among these control strategies, we
can mention the vector control, which is one of the so-called field-oriented control
(FOC) methods. The principle of vector control is to control independently the two
Park components of the motor current, namely those responsible for producing the
torque and flux. In that way, the IM drive operates like a separately excited DC

International Journal of Electrical Engineering Education 47/2