Position Control of a Multi-Motor Drive Based on Series-Connected Five-Phase Tubular PM Actuators

In this paper, an electric drive for positioning systems, consisting of two five-phase tubular permanent-magnet (PM) actuators fed by a single five-phase inverter, is described. The key idea is to combine together the technologies of tubular PM actuators and of multiphase drives. A proximate time-optimal positioning control scheme and a more conventional positioning control scheme based on PI regulators are presented. In both cases, the disturbances introduced by the parasitic coupling between the two actuators due to a realistic non-ideal sinusoidal distribution of the stator windings are considered and compensated. The behavior of the drive is assessed by means of experimental tests.