Transient analysis of PM synchronous motor drives by finite element model co-simulation

This paper presents an analysis technique of electric motor drives based on transient simulation tools and embedded finite-element motor modeling (co-simulation). A couple of software tools, namely Cedrat Flux and Portunus, are employed suitably interfaced each other. The first one allows the computation of the motor electromagnetic behavior using a finite element model, while the second one allows the dynamic simulation of the control and feeding converter. The interacting use of these tools allows a detailed prediction of the motor transient behavior under a given control strategy and drive scheme. As test case a permanent magnet synchronous motor for biomedical application is considered, driven by field-oriented control. The co-simulation approach is at first compared with the (usual) lumped parameter modeling simulation and then verified by experiments. The results demonstrate that the co-simulation procedure allows taking into account not negligible phenomena, such as cogging and torque ripple, usually not considered in similar studies. Hence, co-simulation analysis represents a significant step for the integrate design of the motor and control, as well as a meaningful tool for electrical drives education.