Hybrid LCI/VSI Power Circuit-A Universal High-Power Converter Solution for Wound Field Synchronous Motor Drives

Load commutated inverter (LCI)-fed wound field synchronous motor drives are used for medium-voltage high-power drive applications. This drive suffers from drawbacks such as complex starting procedure, sixth harmonic torque pulsations, quasi square wave motor current, notches in the terminal voltages, etc. In this paper, a hybrid converter circuit, consisting of an LCI and a voltage source inverter (VSI), is proposed, which can be a universal high-power converter solution for wound field synchronous motor drives. The proposed circuit, with the addition of a current-controlled VSI, overcomes nearly all of the shortcomings present in the conventional LCI-based system besides providing many additional advantages. In the proposed drive, the motor voltage and current are always sinusoidal even with the LCI switching at the fundamental frequency. The performance of the drive is demonstrated with detailed experimental waveforms from a 15.8-hp salient pole wound field synchronous machine. Finally, a brief description of the control scheme used for the proposed circuit is given.

Micro stepping of Shape Memory Alloy based Poly Phase motor

In literature we find broadly two types of shape memory alloy based motors namely limited rotation motor and unlimited rotation motor. The unlimited rotation type SMA based motor reported in literature uses SMA springs for actuation. An attempt has been made in this paper to develop an unlimited rotation type balanced poly phase motor based on SMA wire in series with a spring in each phase. By isolating SMA actuation and spring action we are able achieve a constant force by the SMA wire through out its range of operation. The Poly phase motor can be used in stepping mode for generating incremental motion and servo mode for generating continuous motion. A method of achieving servo motion by micro stepping is presented. Micro stepping consists of controlling single-phase temperature with a position feedback. The motor has been modeled with a new approach to the SMA wire Hysterysis model. Motor is simulated for different responses and the results are compared with the experimental data.

Shape memory alloy based motor

Design and characterization of a new shape memory alloy wire based Poly Phase Motor has been reported in this paper. The motor can be used either in stepping mode or in servo mode of operation. Each phase of the motor consists of an SMA wire with a spring in series. The principle of operation of the poly phase motor is presented. The motor resembles a stepper motor in its functioning though the actuation principles are different and hence has been characterized similar to a stepper motor. The motor can be actuated in either direction with different phase sequencing methods, which are presented in this work. The motor is modelled and simulated and the results of simulations and experiments are presented. The experimental model of the motor is of dimension 150mm square, 20mm thick and uses SMA wire of 0·4mm diameter and 125mm of length in each phase.

Energy-insensitive Guidance of Solid Motor Propelled Long Range Flight Vehicles Using MPSP and Dynamic Inversion

A energy-insensitive explicit guidance design is proposed in this paper by appending newlydeveloped nonlinear model predictive static programming technique with dynamic inversion, which render a closed form solution of the necessary guidance command update. The closed form nature of the proposed optimal guidance scheme suppressed the computational difficulties, and facilitate realtime solution. The guidance law is successfully verified in a solid motor propelled long range flight vehicle, for which developing an effective guidance law is more difficult as compared to a liquid engine propelled vehicle, mainly because of the absence of thrust cutoff facility. The scheme guides the vehicle appropriately so that it completes the mission within a tight error bound assuming that the starting point of the second stage to be a deterministic point beyond the atmosphere. The simulation results demonstrate its ability to intercept the target, even with an uncertainty of greater than 10% in the burnout time

A Real-time clustering system for spatio-temporal signals from network of neurons

Over past few years, the studies of cultured neuronal networks have opened up avenues for understanding the ion channels, receptor molecules, and synaptic plasticity that may form the basis of learning and memory. The hippocampal neurons from rats are dissociated and cultured on a surface containing a grid of 64 electrodes. The signals from these 64 electrodes are acquired using a fast data acquisition system MED64 (Alpha MED Sciences, Japan) at a sampling rate of 20 K samples with a precision of 16-bits per sample. A few minutes of acquired data runs in to a few hundreds of Mega Bytes. The data processing for the neural analysis is highly compute-intensive because the volume of data is huge. The major processing requirements are noise removal, pattern recovery, pattern matching, clustering and so on. In order to interface a neuronal colony to a physical world, these computations need to be performed in real-time. A single processor such as a desk top computer may not be adequate to meet this computational requirements. Parallel computing is a method used to satisfy the real-time computational requirements of a neuronal system that interacts with an external world while increasing the flexibility and scalability of the application. In this work, we developed a parallel neuronal system using a multi-node Digital Signal processing system. With 8 processors, the system is able to compute and map incoming signals segmented over a period of 200 ms in to an action in a trained cluster system in real time.

A five level inverter scheme with common mode volatge elimination by cascading conventional two level and three level NPC inverters for an induction motor drive

Common-mode voltage generated by the PWM inverter causes shaft voltage, bearing current and ground leakage current in induction motor drive system, resulting in an early motor failure. This paper presents a common-mode elimination scheme for a five-level inverter with reduced power circuit complexity. The proposed scheme is realised by cascading conventional two-level and conventional NPC three-level inverters in conjunction with an open-end winding three-phase induction motor drive and the common-mode voltage (CMV) elimination is achieved by using only switching states that result in zero CMV, for the entire modulation range.

An Overmodulation Scheme for Vector Controlled Induction Motor Drives

This paper presents an algorithm for control of line side voltage of a voltage source inverter upto six-step mode. This is a modified version of an existing overmodulation algorithm. The modified algorithm maintains proportionality between the reference voltage and the output fundamental voltage, and also reduces the computational effort required for implementation, while resulting in a marginally higher harmonic distortion. An estimation method is proposed for calculation of lower order ripple current. This estimation method is applied to a sensorless vector controlled induction motor drive to improve the performance of the drive during overmodulation.

Trans-saccadic processing of visual and motor planning during sequential eye movements

How the brain maintains perceptual continuity across eye movements that yield discontinuous snapshots of the world is still poorly understood. In this study, we adapted a framework from the dual-task paradigm, well suited to reveal bottlenecks in mental processing, to study how information is processed across sequential saccades. The pattern of RTs allowed us to distinguish among three forms of trans-saccadic processing (no trans-saccadic processing, trans-saccadic visual processing and trans-saccadic visual processing and saccade planning models). Using a cued double-step saccade task, we show that even though saccade execution is a processing bottleneck, limiting access to incoming visual information, partial visual and motor processing that occur prior to saccade execution is used to guide the next eye movement. These results provide insights into how the oculomotor system is designed to process information across multiple fixations that occur during natural scanning.

A Novel VSI- and CSI-Fed Active-Reactive Induction Motor Drive with Sinusoidal Voltages and Currents

Till date load-commutated inverter (LCI)-fed synchronous motor drive configuration is popular in high power applications (>10 MW). The leading power factor operation of synchronous motor by excitation control offers this simple and rugged drive structure. On the contrary, LCI-fed induction motor drive is absent as it always draws lagging power factor current. Therefore, complicated commutation circuit is required to switch off thyristors for a current source inverter (CSI)-driven induction motor. It poses the major hindrance to scale up the power rating of CSI-fed induction motor drive. Anew power topology for LCI-fed induction motor drive for medium-voltage drive application is proposed. A new induction machine (active-reactive induction machine) with two sets of three-phase winding is introduced as a drive motor. The proposed power configuration ensures sinusoidal voltage and current at the motor terminals. The total drive power is shared among a thyristor-based LCI, an insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT)-based two-level voltage source inverter (VSI), and a three-level VSI. The benefits of SCRs and IGBTs are explored in the proposed drive. Experimental results from a prototype drive verify the basic concepts of the drive.

Digital Simulation of Field-Oriented Control of Induction Motor

This paper describes the simulation of a control scheme using the principle of field orientation for the control of a voltage source inverter-fed induction motor. The control principle is explained, followed by an algorithm to simulate various components of the system in the digital computer. The dynamic response of the system for the load disturbance and set-point variations have been studied. Also, the results of the simulation showing the behavior of field coordinates for such disturbances are given.

Microprocessor-Based Field-Oriented Control of A CSI-Fed Induction Motor Drive

This paper describes the method of field orientation of the stator current vector with respect to the stator, mutual, and rotor flux vectors, for the control of an induction motor fed from a current source inverter (CSI). A control scheme using this principle is described for orienting the stator current with respect to the rotor flux, as this gives natural decoupling between the current coordinates. A dedicated micro-computer system developed for implementing this scheme has been described. The experimental results are also presented.

Fast Direct Torque Control of an Open-End Induction Motor Drive Using 12-Sided Polygonal Voltage Space Vectors

A torque control scheme, based on a direct torque control (DTC) algorithm using a 12-sided polygonal voltage space vector, is proposed for a variable speed control of an open-end induction motor drive. The conventional DTC scheme uses a stator flux vector for the sector identification and then the switching vector to control stator flux and torque. However, the proposed DTC scheme selects switching vectors based on the sector information of the estimated fundamental stator voltage vector and its relative position with respect to the stator flux vector. The fundamental stator voltage estimation is based on the steady-state model of IM and the synchronous frequency of operation is derived from the computed stator flux using a low-pass filter technique. The proposed DTC scheme utilizes the exact positions of the fundamental stator voltage vector and stator flux vector to select the optimal switching vector for fast control of torque with small variation of stator flux within the hysteresis band. The present DTC scheme allows full load torque control with fast transient response to very low speeds of operation, with reduced switching frequency variation. Extensive experimental results are presented to show the fast torque control for speed of operation from zero to rated.

Fast Robust Pattern Classification Algorithms for Real Time Neuro-Motor Prosthetic Applications

In this paper, we give a brief review of pattern classification algorithms based on discriminant analysis. We then apply these algorithms to classify movement direction based on multivariate local field potentials recorded from a microelectrode array in the primary motor cortex of a monkey performing a reaching task. We obtain prediction accuracies between 55% and 90% using different methods which are significantly above the chance level of 12.5%.

Low-inductance axial flux BLDC motor drive for more electric aircraft

As aircraft technology is moving towards more electric architecture, use of electric motors in aircraft is increasing. Axial flux BLDC motors (brushless DC motors) are becoming popular in aero application because of their ability to meet the demand of light weight, high power density, high efficiency and high reliability. Axial flux BLDC motors, in general, and ironless axial flux BLDC motors, in particular, come with very low inductance Owing to this, they need special care to limit the magnitude of ripple current in motor winding. In most of the new more electric aircraft applications, BLDC motor needs to be driven from 300 or 600 Vdc bus. In such cases, particularly for operation from 600 Vdc bus, insulated-gate bipolar transistor (IGBT)-based inverters are used for BLDC motor drive. IGBT-based inverters have limitation on increasing the switching frequency, and hence they are not very suitable for driving BLDC motors with low winding inductance. In this study, a three-level neutral point clamped (NPC) inverter is proposed to drive axial flux BLDC motors. Operation of a BLDC motor driven from three-level NPC inverter is explained and experimental results are presented.