DTC Scheme for a Four-Switch Inverter-Fed Induction Motor Emulating the Six-Switch Inverter Operation

This paper proposes a novel direct torque control (DTC) strategy for induction motor (IM) drives fed by a four-switch three-phase inverter (FSTPI). The introduced strategy is based on the emulation of the operation of the conventional six-switch three-phase inverter (SSTPI). This has been achieved thanks to a suitable combination of the four unbalanced voltage vectors intrinsically generated by the FSTPI, leading to the synthesis of the six balanced voltage vectors of the SSTPI. This approach has been adopted in the design of the vector selection table of the proposed DTC strategy which considers a subdivision of the Clarke plane into six sectors. Simulation results have revealed that, thanks to the proposed DTC strategy, FSTPI-fed IM drives exhibit interesting performance. These have been experimentally validated and compared to the ones yielded by the Takahashi and the basic DTC strategies dedicated to the SSTPI and to the FSTPI, respectively.