Control Strategies for Open-End Winding Drives Operating in the Flux-Weakening Region

This paper presents and compares control strategies for three-phase open-end winding drives operating in the flux-weakening region. A six-leg inverter with a single dc link is associated with the machine in order to use a single energy source. With this topology, the zero-sequence circuit has to be considered since the zero-sequence current can circulate in the windings. Therefore, conventional overmodulation strategies are not appropriate when the machine enters in the flux-weakening region. A few solutions dealing with the zero-sequence circuit have been proposed in the literature. They use a modified space vector modulation or a conventional modulation with additional voltage limitations. This paper describes the aforementioned strategies, and then, a new strategy is proposed. This new strategy takes into account the magnitudes and phase angles of the voltage harmonic components. This yields better voltage utilization in the dq frame. Furthermore, inverter saturation is avoided in the zero-sequence frame, and therefore, zero-sequence current control is maintained. Three methods are implemented on a test bed composed of a three-phase permanent-magnet synchronous machine, a six-leg inverter, and a hybrid digital signal processor /field-programmable gate array controller. Experimental results are presented and compared for all strategies. A performance analysis is conducted as regards the region of operation and the machine parameters.