Copyright © IFAC Control of Industrial Systems,

Belfort, France, 1997

FUZZY LOGIC CONTROL OF DC MOTOR DRIVES

Basan A. Yousef

Department ofElectrical Engineering. University ofQatar

Doha, Qatar PO Box 2713.

Abstract: This paper considers the application of fuzzy logic-based control to a dc

drive system, The dc drive system is a dc series motor driven by a single-phase
full converter. Two fuzzy controllers are proposed for the drive system, namely,
speed and current controllers, The fuzzy control laws are developed to regulate the
motor speed and maintain the current at a limiting value. Simulation study of the
fuzzy controlled drive system has been carried out to validate the proposed
controllers. The simulation results clarify the superiority of the designed fuzzy
controllers over the classical PI controllers.

Keywords: Fuzzy control, drives, converters, Fuzzification.

1. INTRODUCTION Series dc motors are extensively used in many

Fuzzy logic control has emerged as one of the most
active research areas in the application of fuzzy set
theory. Variables in fuzzy logic may take sets of
values which are defined by linguistic terms such as
small, medium. large, etc. These terms are
represented numerically by fuzzy sets. Every fuzzy
set is characterized by a membership function which
varies between 0 and 1. A fuzzy logic control
algorithm for industrial processes expresses the
intuition and experience of an operator in linguistic
control rules and converts them into automatic
control strategy (Li and Lau, 1989; Lee, 1990a; Lee
1990b). Therefore fuzzy logic can be applied to
control complex nonlinear systems ~ith unknown or
unmodeled dynamics,
Fuzzy logic control has been successfully applied to
motor drives ( Liaw and Wang, 1991; Sousa and
Bose, 1994; de Silva, et a11994; Kim, et al. 1994).
In this paper the application of fuzzy logic to control
a dc drive system is presented. The dc drive system
considered in this paper comprises a single-phase
controlled full converter and a dc series motor.
applications that require high starting torque such as
cranes, hoists, electric traction, etc. A nonlinear
controller based on differential geometry approach
has been designed for a series dc motor fed from a dc
supply ( Chiasson, 1994; Olivier, 1991). The
drawback of this approach is that the system model
should be known and the controller is sensitive to
parameter variations. In order to control the speed of
such drive while maintaining the current at a limiting
value, a fuzzy proportional plus integral speed and
current controllers are designed.
2.. DC SERIES MOTOR WITH PHASE
CONTROLLED CONVERTER
The nonlinear differential equations governing the
performance of the dc series motor are given by ( Sen
, 1981):
dd~a = (ljLa)(ea - Ra i a - karia Ul - kresUl)
(1)
d ia = (1/J)(kari2_~Ul -TL> (2)
dt a

751
where t2
A'a
is the annature resistance ' La is the
annature inductance, kaf is the annature voltage
constant , ~ is the residual magnetism voltage
constant, J is the moment of inertia, ~ is the
friction coefficient, T L is the load torque, ea is the
motor tenninal voltage, ia is the armature current
and (i.) is the motor speed. The power circuit that
drives the motor is a single-phase fully controlled
converter. The average motor terminal voltage
supplied by the converter is given by ( Sell, 1981) :
2.fiV
cos Cl (3)
7t

where V is the rms supply voltage and ex. is the

converter firing angle.
Fig. 1 Fuzzy Control of series dc motor.
The speed control system under consideration is
shown in Fig.l where the speed control loop has an
inner current control loop to provide fast transient
response as well as to limit the armature current.
The speed controller is designed in such a way to
produce a desired reference signal iar for the current Funification
controller. The output of the current controller is
fed to a cosine wave crossing scheme (Vithayathil,
1995) to generate the firing angel ex. which controls
the motor terminal voltage according to (3). e, 6e Physical
Plan!

3. DESIGN OF FUZZY CONTROLLER

Fig. 2 Typical Configuration of a fuzzy logic
In this section, the design procedures of fuzzy PI
controller
speed and current controllers are presented. The
basic structure of a fuzzy logic controller (FLC) is
3.1 Fuzzjfication
sho\\n in Fig.2 (Yamakawa, 1992; Cox, 1992). A
typical FLC consists of three basic components,
The motor variables to be controlled are the speed (i.)
namely, input signal fuzzification, a fuzzy engine,
and the armature current ia . In the proposed PI fuzzy
and output signal defuzzification. The fuzzification
speed controller, the input variables are defined as the
block transforms the continuous input signal into
linguistic fuzzy variables. The fuzzy engine handles
rule inference where human e>.-perience can easily be
motor speed error es (k) and the error change 6. es
injected through linguistic rules. The defuzzification
(k):
block transforms the fuzzy control actions to
(4)
continuous (crisp) signals which can be applied to
the physical plant. The knowledge base includes
(5)
fuzzy sets, which are defined on the interval of
inputs and outputs of the FLC, and a rule base,
which is constructed from fuzzy implications. Equations similar to (4) and (5) can be defined for the
PI fuzzy current controller:
Mainly, two types of structure of FLC have been
(6)
studied in the literature (Lee, 1993). One is position-
type or PD (proportional-derivative) FLC and the
other is velocity-type or PI (proportional-integral) (7)
FLC. In the viewpoint that FLC is based on the
knowledge of human e>.-perts, PI FLC is known to be where ror(k) is the reference speed signal, ro(k) is the
more practical than PD FLC (Lee, 1993). The design actual motor speed, iar (k) is the reference current
procedure of PI FLC used in this paper is briefly signal (generated from the speed controller) and ia (k)
described in the following sections. is the armature current all at the k th sampling
interval.

752
The error and error change for both speed and
current are scaled using appropriate scaling factors.
These scaled input data are then converted into
linguistic variables which may be viewed as labels of
fuzzy sets. In this paper, the following linguistic
variables are used for the input variables: Positive -.,.1 -I -2/3 -1/1 C '11 2/3 , ./1
Big (PB), Negative Big (NB), Positive Medium c,)
(PM), Negative Medium (NM), Positive Small (PS),
Negative Small (NS) and Zero (Z).

A fuzzy set is defined by assigning the grade of

membership values to each element of the universe
..
of discourse. There are many types of membership (=)
functions, e.g., the bell-shaped, the triangular-
shaped, the trapezoidal-shaped, etc. The choice of
membership function shape is mainly dependent on
the designer preference (Kung and Liaw, 1994). For
simplicity, the triangular-shaped functions are used
in this application. In the universe of discourse, the -1 :: -1 -C.I -0.6 -0.. -C.2 c.:: 0." 06 C.a - I : 2

numbers for the aforementioned linguistic variables (:)

are selected as follows :NB: {-1.33, -l.0, -o.66},

NM: {-l.0, -0.66, -0.33},NS:{-o.66,-0.33,0},
Z:{-Q.33, 0 , 0.33 },PS:{0,0.33, 0.66}, PM:
{0.33,0.66, l.0}, PB: {0.66, l.0, 1.33}. The
membership functions for the error and the change
of error are shown in Fig. 3 (a) and (b). These
functions are assumed to be the same for both input
variables.
Fig. 3. Membership functions for speed and current
controllers: (a) error, (b) change in error and
(c) change in control.
2. If the error is positive and increasing (i.e. Ae is
positive), then positive control input (A u positive)
should be used to reduce the error to zero.

3. If the error is negative and decreasing (i.e. A e is

3.2 Fuzzy Control Rules negative), then negative control input is used (A u
negative) to minimize the error.
The fuzzy control rules are developed based on 4. If the error is positive and decreasing (or negative
intuition and e>'llerience instead of the availability and increasing), then small or zero control input is
of the system model. The structure of a general rule required.
can be written as:
H e(k) is A and Ae(k) is B, Then Au (k) is C According to the above observations, a set of fuzzy
where Au (k) is the change in control input ( which control rules are selected. Since both the speed and
is the output of the fuzzy controller) and A, Band C current loops must satisfy the needs of fast transient
are the fuzzy subsets defined over the universe of response with minimum overshoot and they have
discourse of e(k), A e(k) and A u(k) respectively. essentially first order characteristics, then, intuitively
The linguistic variables used for the output signal the same fuzzy control rules should be valid for both
Au(k) and their associated numbers are: Positive loops. These rules are given in Table 1.
Very Big (PVB): {0.8, l. 0, 1.2}, Positive Big
(PB): { 0.6 , 0.8, 1.0}, Positive Medium (PM): Table 1 Fuzzv control rules for speed
{OA, 0.6, 0.8}, Positive Small (PS): { 0.2 ,aA, 0.6 and current controllers
}, Zero (Z): { 0.2, 0.0, 0.2 }, Negative Small (NS) :
{-Q.6, -0.4, -0.2 }, Negative Medium (NM): {-o.8, e NB NM NS Z PS PM PB
-0.6, -Q.4}, Negative Big (NB) : {-l.0, -0.8, -o.6} !!J.e
NB NVB NVB ?>:VB NB NM NS Z
and Negative Very Big (NVB): {-1.2, -1.0, -o.8}.
NM NVB NVB NB NM NS Z PS
The membership function for the output variable
NS NVB NB NM NS Z PS PM
Au(k) is shown in Fig. 3 (c).
Z NB NM NS Z PS PM PB
PS NM NS Z PS PM PB PVB
In order to determine the fuzzy control rules, the
PM NS Z PS PM PB PVB PVB
following observations are used :
PB Z PS PM PB PVB PVB PVB
1. If both the error (e) and the error change (A e)
are zero, then the control settings should be kept at
its present value (i.e. A u = 0 ).

753
3.3 Dejuzzijication armature current and the motor terminal voltage are
shown in Fig. 4. Comparisons between settling time
Basically, a defuzzification scheme can be viewed as and max overshoot of speed response for both types of
a mapping from a space of fuzzy control actions controllers are given in Table 2. It is evident that the
defined over an output universe of discourse into a transient behavior of the fuzzy controlled drive is
space of crisp control actions. The aim of a improved when the fuzzy controllers are used in both
defuzzification strategy is to produce a crisp fuzzy the speed and current loops.
action that best represents the possibility distribution
of an inferred fuzzy control action (Pedrycz, 1989). Table 2 Performance comparison of fuzzy and
Many strategies are available in the literature for classical PI controlled drive SYstem
performing defuzzification such as the max criterion, ~= 1800 rpm)
the mean of maximum. and center- of- gravity
methods (Lee, 1990b; Pedrycz, 1989). The widely Controller Fuzzy Classical PI
used strategy for defuzzification is the center-of-
gravity method which is adopted in this paper. In Value of
this method, the rule value vector is searched for all Settling time 1.7 sec 2.67 sec.
rules which give a fuzzy value for a particular output Max overshoot 3.21 % 6.72 %
variable. As each rule defining a particular output
variable is found. its rule value is used to modify the The effects of load torque disturbance of 50% applied
corresponding membership function. Then, after all at t = 2.0 s are shown in Fig. 5. Table 3 sununarizes
the rules have been swept, the areas under the the response improvement under fuzzy control.
modified membership functions are multiplied by
their respective centers of gravity and summed. The Table 3 Performance comparison of fuzzy and
result is divided by the sum of the areas of all the classical PI controlled drive system
modified membership functions to get the required ~ = 1800 rpm, ~TL = 5 Nm at t =2.0 s)
crisp value. The modification to the membership
function can be accomplished with two techniques, Controller Fuzzy Classical PI
the correlation minimum encoding and the
correlation product encoding. The latter technique is Value of
used in this work. Once a crisp value of ~u (k) is Max overshoot 3.21 % 6.72%
determined. the control signal u (k) can be evaluated Max speed drop 3.5% 5.26%
from the recursive formula Recovery time 2.4 sec. 2.82 sec.

u (1<) = ~u (k) + u(k-l) (8)
4. SIMULAnON STIJDY
In order to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed
controllers, digital simulation of the drive system has
been performed. The parameters of the drive system
are as follows ( Sen, 1981): kaf= 0.027 H, krres =
0.027 Y.sec/rad. ~= In, La = 0.032 H, J = 0.0465
kg-m2 , ~ = 0.004 N.m.sec/rad. ~ = tacho constant
= 0.057 V.sec/rad. Icy. = current transducer constant
= 0.5 V/A, k c = cosine firing scheme constant = 25.
The steady state operating point is 0. 0 =25.8°, eao=
102.6 V, Ci>o = 155.4 rad/sec, iao = 18.7 A and T Lo
= 10 N.m. For the sake of comparison, classical PI
speed and currnet controllers are also designed and
simulated with the drive system. The parameters of
these controllers are found to be:'ts = speed controller
time constant = 0.5 sec., 'tj = current controller time
constant = 0.01 sec., ~ = speed controller gain = 1.2
and ~ = current controller gain = 0.01.
The reason for superior performance of fuzzy
controlled drive system is that it is basically adaptive
in nature and the controllers are able to realize
different control laws for each input state ( e(k) and ~
e(k». On the other hand. the response of classical PI
controlled system is sensitive to model changes that
occur with parameter variations ( Sousa and Bose,
1994; Kung and Liaw 1994).
5. CONCLUSION
In this paper an application of fuzzy logic control to a
phase<ontrolled converter dc drive system is
presented. Fuzzy logic is used to design current and
speed controllers for the drive system. The fuzzy rules
are extracted intuitively. The performance of the
proposed controllers is compared with the
conventional PI controllers. Simulation results clarify
the superior performance of the proposed fuzzy
controlled dc drive system.

The drive system is simulated with classical and

fuzzy control loops for reference speed Ci>r= 1800
rpm. The time responses of the motor speed, the

754
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oc 1.0 2.~ 30 4~ 5.0 61 1~:iO.O -t:---...-----=-.----.----,---...--~
0.0 1 :- 2.<: 3.0 ~.': 5.'J c .:
Time (s~.:)
Tim~ (sec)

25.0
20.0:
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c:
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u nc - - - PI Closs;cal
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Fig. 4 Time response for step reference input: top- Fig. 5 Time response for step reference input and load
speed, middle-armature current,and bottom- disturbance torque: top-speed, middle-armature
terminal voltage. current, and bottom-terminal voltage.

755
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