Fuzzy Power Factor Control in a Variable Load Circuit

Constantin Suciu Mohan Kansara Nottingham Trent University, Transilvania University, Faculty of Electrical Eng., Bvd. Eroilor nr. Dpt.of Electrical&Electronic Eng. Burton Street,NGl 4BU, U.K. 29, Brasov, 2200, Romania, e-mail: suciuc@unitbv.ro e-mail:mohan.kansara@ntu.ac.uk John Redgate Nottingham Trent University, Dpt.of Electrical&Electronic Eng. Burton Street,NG 1 4BU, U.K. e-mail:john.redgate@ntu.ac.uk

Abstract
The paper presents a practical implementation of a fuzzy controller for the control of power factor in a circuit with variable inductive load using a switched capacitor Both, the switched capacitor principle and the construction of the fuzzy control algorithms, are described. The experimental results show the achievement of good response even if the parameters of the circuit are unknown. Keywords: power factor, switched capacitor, fuzzy control, Fourier series

This paper advances a fuzzy control strategy of the phase angle between the voltage and the current of a variable RL load using the system introduced in [3]. - This control method is-easy to adapt for performance control of an induction motor.

Switched capacitor principle

An AC capacitor is placed in the middle of an H bridge as

Introduction

The reactance control is an important issue in applications such as power factor control or rotor impedance control of induction motors [1,2] where significant improvements can be achieved. In both situations, it is required to emulate capacitive effects that sometimes are significant, especially in the case of induction motors. The problems that appear in these implementations are the load variations that imply a mechanism to produce controllable variable czpacitive effects. A dynamic emulation method of high value capacitors is presented in [3]. The method was developed with the purpose to control the impedance of the rotor circuit of an induction machine but, also, can be used for power factor control or to improve the starting torque of single phase motors[4].

is shown in fig. 1. The bridge switches are bidirectional. The switch pairs (Sl,S4) respective (S2,S3) are complementary operated using a PWM strategy. If tl is time interval when (Sl,S4) are ON and tz is time interval when (S2,S3) are ON, tl+tz=T,, then duty ratio d is de.fined .as d=tl/T,, where T, is the switching period. To control the power factor means to control the phase angle between the input voltage u and the resulting current i. Modifying the value of the duty ratio d between [0.5,1], it is possible to control the phase angle between
a tan($]

and a tan([&

-$)I)

where R,L are the load parameters, o is the circuit pulsation and C is the capacitor placed in the H bridge. The expression of the circuit phase angle O, is, as results fiom [4]:

9 = a tan -- ------

: i

''~~)'

Fig. 1: Switched capacitor in RL circuit

The value of the desired phase angle depends on the applied duty ratio d, capacitor C and the load parameters R, L, o.Due to various reasons the load conditions may change and in this case, since the capacitor is constant, a different duty ratio has to be applied to maintain the desired phase angle as results from (1). A circuit that has initial parameters R=lOQ, L=8.5mH, ~ 3 1 4 r a d / s , C=20pF is considered for exemplification. The duty ratio as function of the desired phase angle is represented for

this circuit in fig.2 (curve 1). If it is considered that the circuit resistance modified during the process(R=5Q), then it can be noticed that the new representation of the duty ratio (curve 2) is different from the previous one and for the same phase angles (except 0) different duty ratios are required. The same thing happens if the circuit pulsation modifies ( ~ 1 5 7 r a d / s curve 3). ,

phase angle [degrees]

Fig. 2: Duty factor versus desired phase angle It can be noticed that the phase angle rp is affected by the variation of R,L or o (Fig. 2). In many applications the load parameters are not known with precision or these could vary during the process(i.e. resistance or pulsation of the rotor). This is the reason that imposes to establish a control strategy that allows to the phase angle even if the parameters are not known.
3

where rpr and rpc are the reference and calculated phase angles, and of he change of error Ae: Ae=e,-ei./ where ei and ei.,are present and the previous errors. The output represents the variation of duty ratio Ad. The value of the duty ratio d; that will be applied to the bridge is: d;=d;.,+Ad where di./ is the previous applied duty ratio. The universe of discourse of the two fuzzy input variables and the output variable are divided into seven overlapping fuzzy sets each: positive big (PB), positive medium (PM), positive small (PS), zero equal (ZE), negative small (NS), negative medium (NM), negative big (NB). The trapezoidal shaped functions have been chosen. Fig. 3 shows the membership distribution of fuzzy variables. Based on the experience and the knowledge about the general evolution of the duty ratio function of phase angle (fig. 2), a knowledge base of 7 x 7 rules, as shown in table 1, was build to control the phase difference.

The Fuzzy Controller

Expert controllers are built considering the knowledge about the behaviour of the controlled process. Fuzzy strategies are part of the expert systems. The fuzzy controllers are based on the system of natural language, which translates human thinking into machine codes. Such controllers have often been found to be superior to conventional controllers especially when the processed information is inexact or uncertain. A typical fuzzy logic controller consists of a fuzzification interface, a knowledge base, a fuzzy inference engine and a defuzzification interface. In the present paper, the fuzzy principles are applied considering that the load parameters vary during the process and it is not possible to identify their values, even initially. The purpose of the fuzzy controller is to maintain unity power factor. The controller has 2 inputs and an output. The inputs consist of the error of the phase angle e: e=rpr-rpc

Fig. 3a: Error membership functions

Fig. 3b: Change of error membership functions

;.
I
;

, I ::
:..I'..;

!" I :

<..+

: .) .I
.

'. ;
j

.:. i( ;.

' ' I

! I .

:
. :

: i . i I I - i

..

<
C

:j . ! .... , :' 1

Fig. 3c: Duty ratio membership functions

Experimental Results

sets (fig 3), deduces which rules for a pair of inputs from all 49 presented in table 1 are activated and calculates the duty ratio variation using the center of area method [5] respective the new value of the duty ratio. The experimental tries were performed starting from a circuit with the parameters L=16.5mH, R=12.2R. The capacitor placed in the middle of the H bridge was of 10pF. The circuit was supplied at 50Hz and 18.3V RMS. The reference phase angle was set to 0' and, as it can be noticed from the fig. 5, this is achieved after approximate 2 1 iterations. After 30 iterations, the circuit parameters were modified on line to: L=3.08mH, R=12.2R. The reference phase angle remained the same. After 10 iterations, the phase angle came back to 0'. The voltage and current waveforms after 1' iteration (measured phase angle 24.67' - fig. 6), 27 iterations (measured phase angle -0.23' - fig. 7) and 46 iterations (measured phase angle 0.17' - fig. 8) are displayed in relative units. It is understood by relative units that the current and voltage are shown with the values delivered by the transducers. The phase angles were calculated considering the current phasor as a reference. It is understood by an iteration the interval between 2 successive moments of phase angle calculation.
Relerence angled CapacRor-1 OuF 0.8

A National Instruments acquisition board was used to acquire with a rate of 16 kHz the supply voltage and current. The signals were sampled through voltage and current LEM transducers. The switching frequency wasS,=IWiz. The phase angle estimation was realized involving Fourier series. The Fourier coefficients of the fundamental harmonics of current and voltage were calculated using voltage and current samples acquired in a supply period (T=l/f, f-5OHz). The drawback of the method derives from the delay (at least one period) between the moment when a new duty ratio is applied to the circuit and the phase angle calculation moment, but presents the advantage that is relative easy to implement software. The fuzzy machine was implemented using C++ language. The program consists of a loop that in the first instance acquires the current and voltage, calculates the phase angle and, then, deduces the phase angle error (difference between the calculated phase angle and the reference phase angle) and the change-of-error. These two values were the inputs to the fuzzy algorithm that calculates the membership degree of each of them to the correspondent 7 fuzzy

.......... 0.75 . . . . . . . . . . .

:....;.... ' ..........

10

20

30 leralimns

40

50

Fig. 4: Duty ratio versus iterations

Relerence anole-0 Ca~ador-10uF

lo!

20

3'0 denhons

4'0

SO

Fig. 5: Phase angle versus iterations

Conclusions

llelalan 1

This paper introduced an expert control method of the current phase in a variable RL circuit using switched capacitors. The experimental test proved good results even if the circuit parameters are not known by the controller, showing a variation of the phase angle in a range of maximum 0.6' around the reference phase angle.The control accuracy is influenced by the sample rate used for phase angle estimation and by the limits of the membership functions. The present application can be easy extended to three phase circuits, especially in induction motor applications, for a simultaneously control of the power factor and efficiency. The drawback determined by the application of Fourier series will be eliminated using the space vector theory[6] that will allow a quick calculation of the phase angles. The center of area method was used as defuzzification method due to the superior results achieved during experiments over other algorithms such as height method.

.
0

.
0 015

.,,

...

...
0.W

0,005 0 0 .1

0 02 0.025 0.03 0.035 semnds

Fig. 6: Waveforms at lS'iteration

lteradan 27
04 .

References
[ l ] Y. Baghouz, O.T. Tan. Optimal Efficiency Speed Control of Induction Motors by Variable Rotor Impedance. In:IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion, Vo1.4, No.2, June 1989, pp. 2 16-223 [2] J., Reinert, M.J. Parsley. Controlling the Speed of an Induction Motor by Resonating the Rotor Circuit. In: IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, Vol. 3 1, No. 4, JulyIAugust 1995, pp.887-89 1 [3] C. Suciu, M. Kansara, P.G. Holmes, W. Szabo. Phase Advancing for Current in R-L Circuits Using Switched Capacitors. In: Electronics Letters, vol. 35, no. 16, Aug. 1999, pp. 1296-7 [4] T.H. Liu. A Maximum Torque Control with a Controlled Capacitor for a Single-Phase Induction Motor. In: IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, Vol. 42, No. 1, February 1995, pp. 17-24. [5] B. Kosko. Neural Networks and Fuzzy Systems. Prentice Hall International, 1993. [6] P. Vas. Vector Control of AC Machines. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1990.

Fig. 7: Waveforms at 271h iteration

Iteration 4 6

.
,
.
-0.4

.
.

.
"

,
.

.
, . . ,
0.04

0.005 0 0 .1

"

0.015 0 0 0 0 5 .2 .2 seconds

"

0.03 0 0 5 .3

Fig. 8: Waveforms at 46" iteration