Efficiency Comparison of PWM-Controlled and PAM-Controlled Sensorless BLDCM Drives for Refrigerator Applications

Yen-Shin Lai* Ko-Yen Lee* Jing-Hong Tseng* Yen-Chang Chen** Tse-Liang Hsiao***
*Center for Power Electronics Technology, Natl. Taipei U. of Tech., Taipei, 106, Taiwan ** Delta Electronics, INC. 3, Tung Yuan Road, Chungli, Taoyuan Hsien, 320, Taiwan ** Environment Laboratories, Industrial Technology Research Institute (EEL/ITRI), Hsinchu, Taiwan becomes more relevant at high speed region. In [2], a current source rectifier is used to adjust DC-link voltage and combined with conventional PWM method, called PAM/PWM method, to control the adjustable speed drives. As compared to conventional PWM inverter with constant DC-link voltage, the PAM/PWM method can effectively reduce the DC-link current ripple and prolong the lifetime of the capacitor. To my best knowledge, efficiency assessment of these approaches has not yet been investigated in details. However, for industry applications, it is very important to see the advantages and cost of these approaches such that the control architecture and the associated hardware can be developed. The main theme of this paper is therefore to assess the advantages and cost of these approaches using BLDCM drives for refrigerator applications. For such applications, pressure difference between inlet and outlet of compressor are required. Therefore, operation in high speed range is retained in most load conditions. II. Experimental System Set-up Fig. 1 shows the experimental system which consists of AC/DC converter, MOSFET-based inverter and BLDCM. The AC/DC converter provides Power Factor Correction (PFC) and variable DC-link voltage. Therefore, the DC-link voltage level is controlled by the error between speed and its command. The specifications of the AC/DC converter are: input = 110V/AC, output = 160V~280V/DC and output rated power = 400 W. More details about the AC/DC converter design will be given in the full paper. The brushless DC motor is designed for refrigerator applications. The specifications are: 3 phase, 4 poles, 280 V, 400 W, 4500 rpm, Rs = 2.1 , Ls = 10.9mH. The compressor of refrigerator is reciprocating type as shown in Fig. 2. The BLDCM is designed to compress the refrigerant to provide high pressure and high temperature refrigerant for the condenser. Fig. 3 shows the photo of the experimental system set-up.

Abstract- For inverter-controlled Brushless DC Motor (BLDM) drives, the inverter can be controlled by either Pulse-Width Modulation techniques with constant DC-link voltage or Pulse-Amplitude Modulation (PAM). PAM modulates the inverter power devices using 120-degree modulation technique and controls the amplitude of DC-link voltage. The advantages and disadvantages of PWM and PAM are assessed using BLDCM drives which are applied to refrigerator. The results show that the PAM control provides higher efficiency as compared with PWM control. To our best knowledge, the reason for this remark is because that the modulation index or duty ratio can be maintained at higher level by varying the DC-link voltage. Because of this, THD and harmonics can be reduced as compared to PWM approach. Experimental results derived from a MCU-controller BLDM drives will be presented for comparison.

Keywords- Brushless DC Motor (BLDM), Pulse-Amplitude Modulation, Pulse-Width Modulation I. Introduction

drives,

It is well known that BLDCM becomes very popular for home appliance applications for being with higher power density, higher efficiency and lower acoustic noise as compared to induction motor and switching reluctance motor. The associated BLDCM drive consists of three-phase inverter and control part. The inverter is controlled by the following ways: 1. PWM control with fixed DC-link voltage 2. PAM with 120-degree commutation control For PWM control, the DC-link voltage is fixed and duty is controlled by the speed and load conditions. For PAM control, 120-degree commutation control is used in general and the DC-link voltage is adjusted according to the error between speed and its reference. Although PAM control gives less switching losses, it requires extra circuit to change the DC-link voltage. In the previous research results, several papers have discussed the advantages of PAM. In [1], PAM has been shown to be superior to PWM method. Because of PWM period interruption caused by commutation and limitation of the resolution of PWM generator, the performance of PWM-controlled BLDCM drives gives more torque ripple. It

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Fig. 1 Experimental system

Fig. 3 Photo of the experimental system III. Control Methods Fig. 4 shows the block diagram of inverter controlled BLDCM drives. As shown in Fig.4, for PWM control PWM generator block gives commutation signals to control power devices via driver circuit. The commutation control signals are generated according to the back-EMF waveforms detected by the terminal voltage sensing circuit. Moreover, for PAM control, the PAM generator gives the DC-link voltage reference to PAM converter to adjust its output. Moreover the PAM converter is with power factor control to give nearly sinusoidal line current waveform. Therefore, the current distortion caused by diode rectifier can be significantly reduced.

Fig. 2 BLDCM motor

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Fig. 4 Block diagram of the presented BLDCM drives with PWM and PAM control

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Fig. 5 shows the control signals for 120-degree commutation control [3-4], which is referred as PAM method when the DC-link voltage is adjustable. This approach is with low switching losses in the inverter side at the cost of significantly high harmonic contents, which result in the increase of loss in the motor side. Fig. 6 illustrates the PWM techniques for commutation control of BLDCM drives using one of the inverter legs as an example. As shown in Fig. 6, the high-side power device is controlled by chopper signal every consecutive 120 degrees in a fundamental period and the associated low-side control signal is shifted by 180 degrees, as compared to its high-side one, to clamp the related inverter output to the negative dc-link rail. The control signals for the other two legs are shifted by 120 degrees and 240 degrees, respectively.

IV. Experimental Assessment Since the PAM converter stage (boost stage) provides the variable DC-link voltage to the inverter for PAM control and fixed voltage for PWM control, its performance is first verified. The specifications of PAM converter stage include: output voltage = 160 V to 280 V, 400 W. Fig. 7 shows the experimental results of output voltage, input voltage and line current for full load condition, 400 W. As shown in Fig. 7 (A) and Fig. 7 (B), the output voltage can follow its reference and draw nearly sinusoidal current from the line side despite of the use of diode rectifier. The related power factor versus output power for output voltage = 160 V and 280 V are illustrated in Fig. 8. As shown in Fig. 8, the power factor is greater than 98% from light load to full load. The results shown in Fig. 7 and Fig. 8 fully confirm the function of PAM converter stage.

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Fig. 5 Control signals, 120-degree commutation, PAM [3-4]

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(B). Output voltage command = 280 V Fig. 7 Experimental results of PAM converter with PFC, Ch 1 = Output voltage, Ch 2 =, Input voltage, Ch 3 = Line current

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1 0.996 0.992 0.988 0.984 0.98 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450

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(B). PWM control, switching frequency = 3 kHz

(B). Output voltage = 280 V Fig. 8 Experimental results of PAM converter with PFC, Power factor (Y-axis) vs. Output power (X-axis) Fig. 9 and Fig. 10 show the experimental results of terminal voltage and current waveforms for PWM and PAM control. For the PWM control, the switching frequency includes 3 kHz and 6 kHz cases. As shown in Fig. 9 and Fig. 10, the current waveforms for PAM control have smaller current ripple as compared to that of PWM control. (C). PWM control, switching frequency = 6 kHz Fig. 9 Speed = 4600 rpm, full load (0.5 N)

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90 85 80 PWM-3K 75 70 65 60 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 Load(Nt-m) 0. 4 0. 5 0.6 PWN-6K PAM

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Fig. 10 Speed = 3390 rpm, full load = 0.5 N-m (B). PWM control, switching frequency = 3 kHz Table 1 summarizes the experimental results for PAM control. As shown in Table 1, PAM control cant reach such speed range under light load condition due to the limitation to the DC-link voltage. In the experimental system, the design specifications of DC-link voltage are 160 V to 280V. Therefore, for the applications requiring wider speed range control, the range of DC-link voltage should be expanded. Table 1 Experimental results, PAM control
Speed Load Efficiency, Efficiency, Efficiency, DC-Bus (rpm) (Ntm) Converter/Inverter Motor Overall Voltage (V) 0.5 0.4 0.3 4600 0.2 0.1 92.5 92.3 91.7 90.7 86.5 91.8 91.9 90.7 89.7 85.3 91.8 91.3 90.7 89.8 93.3 84.7 83.6 81.8 76.2 95 95.1 94.7 94.4 92.3 94.9 94.8 94.8 95.1 86.3 84.7 83.6 81.8 76.2 87.2 87.4 85.8 84.7 78.7 87.2 86.5 85.9 85.4 243.3 235.6 224.1 205 185.9 206.1 200.6 191.5 174.7 159.3 173.5 168 161.2 156.5

(C). PWM control, switching frequency = 6 kHz Fig. 10 Speed = 3390 rpm, full load (0.5 N)
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Fig. 11 and Fig. 12 show the comparison results of efficiency. As shown in Fig. 12, PAM provides the highest efficiency and PWM with 3 kHz of switching frequency is the next. As the speed is increased to the rated speed, 4600 rpm, similar remarks can be derived.
90 85 Efficiency(%) 80 PWM-3K 75 70 65 60 0 0. 1 0.2 0.3 Load(Nt-m) 0.4 0.5 0.6 PWM-6K PAM

V. Conclusions This paper presents sensorless BLDCM drive system with power factor correction for refrigerator applications. The drive can be controlled by PWM or PAM methods. For PAM control, the DC-link voltage level is adjusted by the error between speed command and its reference. It has been shown that PAM control is superior to PWM control for providing higher overall efficiency for such applications. The cost for PAM control has to pay is requiring variable DC-link voltage level control. This can be easily realized by the off-self DC/DC converter controller. Therefore, for high speed range applications, such as air-conditioner and refrigerator, PAM is recommended since it provides higher

Fig. 9 Speed = 4600 rpm, full load = 0.5 N-m

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overall efficiency. References

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