Sensorless Speed/Position Control of Brushed DC Motor

E. Afjei,A. Nadian Ghomsheh, and A. Karami

Shahid Beheshti university, Saadat Research Institute Tehran, Iran afjei@yahoo.com
Abstract- This paper presents a new and novel technique for speed control of a brushed DC motor without employing any direct shaft transducer in its feedback mechanism. This method uses the current/voltage variation produced on the motor main input power lines as the brushes move from collector blade to the next. The frequency of variation is proportional to the motor speed and the rotor position can also be detected by monitoring the changes for each collector blade. The performance of the motor torque speed characteristic using this system as its feedback has been evaluated through laboratory testing. This configuration is very suitable for harsh environment and places with not enough space for the motor with discrete sensors.

Keywords- DC motor; Speed Control, sensorless control

I. INTRODUCTION

Brushed DC motors used in many applications such as still rolling mills, electric trains, electric vehicles, electric cranes and robotic manipulators require speed controllers to perform their tasks. These motors are easy to dive, fully controllable and readily available in all sizes and configurations [1-2]. DC drive systems are often used in many industrial applications such as robotics, actuation and manipulators. In the first two, a wide range of speed or position control is required. In manipulators, dc motors are used to follow a predetermined speed or position track under variable load. Different control strategies have been proposed to control and achieve good performance of DC motors [3-4]. In general, the open loop current control acts directly on torque and thus protects the electronics, the motor, and the load. In open loop variable voltage control with current limiting circuit constitutes the simplest way of varying speed. However, a closed-loop speed control is utilized if precision for the speed control is required [5]. The speed of DC motors can be adjusted within wide boundaries so that this provides easy controllability and high performance. Speed controller of DC motors is carried out by 'means of voltage control in 1981 by Ward Leonard [6]. The speed of a brushed DC motor is proportional to the applied voltage. Nowadays, using digital control, a pulse width modulated (PWM) signal is used to generate an average voltage. The motor winding acts as a low pass filter so a PWM waveform of sufficient frequency will generate a stable current in the motor winding. The frequency of the PWM signal is an important consideration. Low frequency will result in a noisy motor at low speeds and sluggish response to the changes in duty cycle. Very high frequency tends to

decrease overall efficiency of the system due to switching losses in the drive circuit power transistors. In order to control precise motor speed, it is necessary to include some sort of feedback mechanism in the system. Speed feedback is implemented in one of two ways [7]. The first involves the use of a direct speed or position sensor which is mounted on the motor shaft. The second uses some kind of sensorless schemes. There are a variety of sensors used for speed/position feedback. The most common are optical encoders, synchros, resolvers, hall effects, and tachogenerators. There are two basic generic styles of optical encoders: incremental and absolute. The incremental encoder provides a pulse each time the shaft has rotated a defined distance while an absolute encoder provides a 'whole world' output with a unique code pattern representing each position. A synchro is an angular position transducer. It consists of a primary wound on the rotor and three secondaries placed 120 apart on the stator. The magnitude and phase of the voltage induced into each stator winding depends on the position of and voltage applied to the rotor. So, for a known primary voltage, the secondary voltages uniquely define the rotor's position. The resolver is similar to the synchro, except there are two secondaries on the stator, placed 90 apart [8]. In the sensorless scheme, the back EMF which is proportional to the motor speed is measured while the PWM signal to the motor is turned off [9]. There are of course many different methods in control of dc motor speed/position using fuzzy logic [10-11] and genetic algorithm [12].

Fig. 1. The general block diagram of the motor control II. THE SENSORLESS METHOD

When the DC motor is turning, and the brushes short out commutator segments with a finite voltage across them the result is a current flow circulating between the shorted segments. This action causes the L di/dt voltage that occurs in commutator segments being shorted out by the brushes, which produces short duration high voltage pulses on the

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motor terminal. Due to change of current direction in some of the coils in the DC motors a small periodic current variation can be detected as the brushes go from a collector segment to the next. The period of current variation and also the number of fast pulses are proportionally related to the motor speed. As the motor speed changes so does these quantities. The current variation or the short duration pulses can be used as a feed back to detect the rotor position or control the motor speed. The general block diagram of the motor control is shown in Fig. 1. For the motor control the H-bridge driver is used. The Rsense takes the sample of the motor line current variations. There are two kinds of variations namely, high voltage pulses when commutator segments being shorted out by the brushes and almost a sine wave or saw tooth type variation as the brushes go from a collector segment to the next can be detected. Fig. 2 shows the actual voltage pulses and the voltage/current waveform on the input main supply to the motor.

twice the amount of time each bush stays on a collector blade. It is worth mentioning that the number of high voltage pulses is proportional to the number of collector blades. According to the motor loads the magnitude of the sin wave shown in Fig. 3 changes. In order to be able to get a constant voltage to be used by the microcontroller, a square wave is developed using the sine wave. Figs. 4a and 4b show both the sine wave and the generated square wave for two different speeds.
a)

b)

Fig. 2. The actual high voltage pulses and the current waveform.

Fig. 4. a Sine wave and square wave (slow speed) b. Sine wave and square wave (high speed)

The current variation and the voltage pulses are clearly shown in Fig. 2. The short duration pulses occur exactly on the highest and the lowest part of the wave where the collector blades are shorted. Due to triggering of oscilloscope one of these pulses did not appear in the Fig 2. There are two ways to go about either detecting the rotor position or controlling the motor speed. In the first method the current waveform variation is used while in the second method the fast voltage pulses are employed for the job. In this paper, the current waveform has utilized for the task. In order to have a nice and clean waveform without fast voltage/current pulses, the entire signal has gone through a filter to get rid of the high voltage pulses. The resulting output is shown in Fig. 3

The square wave is fed into a microcontroller to produce high frequency pulses embedded in each cycle for every collector blade. The frequency of the embedded pulse train is set automatically or by the user. Figs.5a and 5b sow the pulse train inside half of the square wave for two different speeds. a)

b)

Fig 3. Resulting filter output

The frequency of the wave shown in Fig. 3 is proportional to the motor speed and each variation period corresponds to

Fig.5. a) The pulse train (slow speed) b) The pulse train (high speed)

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The number of pulses in each half or full cycle of the square wave is counted by the microcontroller and from that, a proper digital number is produced for the D/A device. The D/A output sets the duty cycle of the drive circuit to keep the motor speed as constant as possible. In the control position mode, a position is set as the reference and then the numbers of pulses are counted from the reference point. The degree of rotation is given to the microcontroller and the motor counts the number of pulses to reach its proper destination. The general flowchart of the position control is given in Fig. 6 In order to reach the desired position, first the required angle is fed into the microcontroller. Depending on the angle, the microcontroller selects the closest angular direction from where its present state. The motor begins to turn in the chosen direction, the square wave signals appear at the comparator output in which the rising edges of the square signals are counted by the microcontroller until the error signal is zero. The motor stop at the required position and this position is then saved. The new position data utilizes the old data position to continue its task.

REFERENCES
[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] Microchip, application notes on brushed Dc motors, AN905, 2004, pp. 1-7. Chan C.C and Chau K.T, Modem Electric Vehicle Technology, Oxford University press, 2001. P. C. Sen, Electric Motor Drives and Control: Past, Present and Future, IEEE Transaction on Industrial Electronics, Vol. IE37, No. 6, 1990, pp. 562-575 G. K. Dubey, Power Semiconductor controlled Drives, Englewood, Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1989 STMicroelectronics, application notes on brushed Dc motors, AN380, 2003, pp. 1-14 P. S. Bimbhra, Generalized Theory of Electrical Machines, Khanna Publishers, Delhi, India, 2001, pp. 93-98. E. Afjei, M.A. Saati, M.M. Nezamabadi, S. Ataei, New Converter Topology for a Hybrid Brushless dc Motor Without Permanent Magnet, ICEM Conf., Greece, pp. 20-25 ,2006 B.C. KUO and J. TAL, Incremental Motion Control, Vol. 1, DC Motors and Control Systems, SRL Publishing Co., Champaign, IL,

1979. Seiko Epson Corp., Brushless dc Motor Without Position Sensor and its Controller, E.P. Patent 0 553 354 B1, 1993 [10] James M. Adams, Application of Fuzzy Logic to Control Sensors, EMCW 2002 Technical Conference, Cincinnati, October 15-17,2002 [11] H.L.Tan, N.A.Rahim, W.P.Hew, A Dynamic Input Membership Scheme for A Fuzzy Logic DC Motor Controller, The IEEE [9] International Conference on Fuzzy Systems, 2003, pp. 426-429. [12] Zakariya M. Al-Hamouz, and Hussain N. AI-Duwaish," A New Variable Structure DC Motor Controller Using Genetic Algorithms", IEEE Transaction on Ind. Application, 1998, pp.1669-1673

Fig. 6. The general flowchart of the position control

III.

CONCLUSION

The new controller assembly has been tested successfully on a dc brushed motor to control motor speed and rotor position. The detailed explanation and demonstration of the circuit have been also presented. This topology provides complete speed/ position control the dc with out using any discrete sensor. This circuit in conjunction with a 60/1 gearbox are used to control the position of a dc motor utilized for satellite dish. This configuration can easily be used in harsh environment and places not enough space for discrete sensors mounted on the back of the motor.

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