Project-oriented adjustable speed motor drive course for undergraduate curricula

Adjustable speed motor drive design requires knowledge of various electrical and mechanical fundamentals. The theories of these fundamental topics are very well addressed in different courses during the undergraduate level of a typical electrical engineering education. Furthermore, related laboratory courses help students to improve their practical skills to some extent. Since they find experimental equipment ready to use, product development skills with group work cannot be improved in laboratories. Also, these separate courses and their associated laboratories regarding fundamentals, such as power electronics, electric machines, electric circuits, electronics, dynamics, and thermal analysis, are independent courses, and students usually cannot find a chance to apply all these fundamentals to a single problem before starting their professional career. This paper summarizes a project-oriented adjustable speed drive design course suitable for senior electrical engineering undergraduate students. The project was divided into several subsystems, and each subsystem was assigned to a group of students among 28 enrolled students. The paper gives enough details for each subsystem to develop an induction motor drive system