IECON2015-Yokohama

November 9-12, 2015

Third harmonic current injection to reduce the

pulsating torque of a ve-phase SPM machine
Franck Scuiller
Research Institute of Naval Academy
BCRM BREST - EN / GEP
CC 600 - 29240 BREST Cedex 9 - FRANCE
franck.scuiller@ieee.org
AbstractFive-phase Surface-mounted Permanent Magnet
(SPM) machine offers the possibility of using the third harmonic
of current to improve the average torque. In this paper, the use
of third harmonic to compensate the pulsating torque and thus
to reduce the vibrations transmitted to the shaft is explored.
According to the multimachine theory, the torque of a vephase star-connected SPM machine is distributed among two
virtual machines: the Main Machine (MM) that corresponds
to the fundamental of the current and the virtual Secondary
Machine (SM) that corresponds to the third harmonic of the
current. With this approach, it is shown that the rst harmonic
of the electromagnetic torque can be almost eliminated for a
particular level of third harmonic current injection: this ratio
depends on the back-emf spectrum and the resulting control
makes the SM operating as generator to absorb the vibrations
due to the MM operating as motor. This method is evaluated for
the design specications of a marine propeller where very low
ripples at low speed are required. According to Finite Elements
analysis, the expected signicant reduction of the torque ripple
factor is conrmed: more than two times with reference to the
sinus control of the MM for the same average torque. The time
simulations of the drive show the positive effect of this damping
control strategy.

MM
SM
MTPA
N
n
h
in
ih
1
3
Ib
Tb
Td

N OMENCLATURE
Main Machine (1st harmonic)
Secondary Machine (3rd harmonic)
Maximum Torque Per Ampere
Phase number (5)
Phase n back-emf at 1 rad/s speed
Peak value of the h-th harmonic of 0
Phase n current
Peak value of the h-th harmonic of i0
MM back-emf to MM current angle
SM back-emf to SM current angle
Base 5-phase machine current
Base average torque (MTPA sinus control)
Average torque with damping control
I.

using the third space harmonic to increase the electromagnetic

torque [2]. Such a strategy requires injecting third harmonic
current to the machine which can be done with Pulse Width
Modulation (PWM) Voltage Source Inverter (VSI) supplying.
To take advantage of this characteristic, the machine can be
designed to obtain a particular back-emf spectrum which can
be achieved with specic winding distribution and magnet
layer characteristics [3]. The third harmonic current injection
is usually implemented to increase the torque, which can be
considered as a boost effect. This paper investigates another
use of the third harmonic current: the possibility of mitigating
the pulsating torque. This function can be seen as a vibration
damping effect. Pulsating torque minimization techniques for
PM machine are reviewed in [4]: the here proposed approach
is an active control technique for pulsating torque reduction
[5].
The third harmonic current injection positively impacts the
torque by enhancing the average value but adversely affects
it by increasing the pulsating level. This side effect can be
reduced with a particular design [6] that consists in adapting
the magnet layer characteristics. But if a quite usual full-pole
pitch magnet layer is chosen, the torque boost usually comes
with more pulsating torques because the third harmonic current
interacts with low order harmonics of the back-emf.
In the rst part, from the multimachine decomposition of
the ve-phase SPM machine, a general criterion to control
the third harmonic to mitigate the overall pulsating torques
is found by using analytical analysis. In the next part, this
criterion is evaluated for the design specications of a marine
propeller. Since very low ripples are demanded for this machine, the winding is a fractional-slot one to obtain very low
cogging torque. The results are estimated with Finite Elements
Analysis (FEA). In the last part, a time simulation of the drive
is carried out to better evaluate the possibility of implementing
the proposed control strategy.
II.

I NTRODUCTION

Multi-phase motors are widely used in electrical marine

propulsion for reasons such as reliability, smooth torque and
distribution of power [1]. In case of direct-drive, the low
rotating speed makes the reduction of ripple torques of critical
importance thus justifying the choice of a surface-mounted PM
rotor (no rotor saliency). Developed to analyze the behavior
of multi-phase machine, the multimachine theory (based on
multi-subspace decomposition) points out the opportunity of

978-1-4799-1762-4/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE

DAMPING CONTROL STRATEGY

A. Multi-machine decomposition of a ve-phase machine

If the magnetic saturations and the demagnetization issue
are not considered, it can be shown that a star-connected vephase SPM machine behaves as two two-phase virtual machines that are magnetically independent but electrically and
mechanically coupled [7]. Furthermore, as the rotor saliency
can be neglected with SPM machines, the space harmonics
are distributed among the two virtual machines: the virtual

000811

machine sensitive to the fundamental is called Main Machine

(MM) whereas the other sensitive to the third harmonic is
called Secondary Machine (SM). The space harmonics are
distributed according to the following law:

MM is sensitive to 1st , 9th , (10k 1)th harmonics

SM is sensitive to 3rd , 7th , (10k 3)th harmonics

particular back-emf harmonics predicted by the multimachine

decomposition (see subsection II-A):
TMM () =
+

Actually the virtual machine is a physical reading of the

mathematical subspace build on the linear application that
describes the phase-to-phase magnetic couplings: this twodimension subspace is usually represented with -axis circuit
in stationary frame or with dq-axis circuit in rotating frame.
MM and SM are also characterized by their cyclic inductances
denoted 1 and 3 (as there is no saliency effect, no distinction
has to be made between d-axis and q-axis inductance). If
the ve-phase machine is supplied with PWM controlled
voltage inverter, the knowledge of the two cyclic inductances
is required to correctly choose the frequency modulation (and
thus avoiding parasitic currents that can occur in case of rst
harmonic sizing of the inverter PWM frequency) [3].

N 
1 i1 cos 1
2
+
N 


k2N 1 i1 cos (k2N 1 )
2
k=1
+
N 


k2N +1 i1 cos (k2N + 1 )
2

(5)

k=1

With third harmonic current injection, the SM produces a

torque that is given by the following relation (where the
interacting back-emf harmonics are the ones predicted by the
multi-machine decomposition):
TSM ()

=
+
+

N 
3 i3 cos 3
2
+
N 


k2N 3 i3 cos (k2N 3 )
2
k=1
+
N 


k2N +3 i3 cos (k2N + 3 )
2

(6)

k=1

B. Electromagnetic torque calculation

Basically, the electromagnetic torque is the sum of the
phase to phase products of the elementary back-emfs (dened
as the back-emfs at one rad/s speed) with the currents:
T () =

N
1


n ()in ()

In equation (1), N is the phase number (N = 5). The phase

n elementary back-emf can be expanded into Fourier series.
If h is the peak value of the h-order harmonic term of the
elementary back-emf, the following relation can be written:
+

h=1



2
h sin h hn
N

(2)



2
g
ig sin g gn
N
g=1

+


(3)

By using relations (1), (2) and (3), taking into account the
fact that back-emf contains only odd order harmonics, the
electromagnetic torque can be expressed as follows:
T () =
+

N
2
N
2

h ig cos ((h g) + g )

(1 , 3 ) {0, }

(8)

For common machine design, the MM torque production

ability is signicantly higher than the one of the SM. Consequently, phase angle 1 is chosen to be zero. The following
control strategy can be applied to eliminate the rst harmonic
of the pulsating torque:

=0

1
3 =
(9)
11 9

i3 = i1 
= i1 r

13 7
C. Virtual machine torque sharing analysis

h ig cos ((h + g) g )

h+g=k2N

(7)
In equation (7), the cosinus term corresponds to the q-axis
currents for the two virtual machines (q1 and q3 ) whereas the
sinus term depends on the d-axis currents (d1 and d3 ). In order
to generate torque and to remove the rst harmonic of the
pulsating torque in the same time, the two d-axis currents has
to be canceled. Thus the phase angles have to comply with the
following relation:
2

The same operation can be done for the phase current. The
following relation is obtained where ig and g respectively
denote the g-th harmonic peak value and the g-th harmonic
phase angle of the current:
in () =

N
2




(



)
i
cos

+
(





11
9 1
1
13
7 )i3 cos 3 cos (2N )




(
11 + 9 )i1 sin 1 + (
13 + 7 )i3 sin 3 sin (2N )
t1 () =

(1)

n=0

n () =

From equations (5) and (6), the rst harmonic of the pulsating
torque can be isolated:

(4)

hg=k2N

In equation (9), the SM to MM current ratio is denoted r.

The base torque of the ve-machine is supposed to be obtained
with MTPA sinus control of the MM supplied with the base
RMS current Ib (that determines the base copper losses, [8]):

Under sinus control strategy, the MM torque results from the

interaction of the fundamental of the current with the set of

000812

Tb =

N
1 Ib 2
2

(10)

If the strategy previously described is applied, the resulting

average torque Td can be expressed as follows:


3
Tb
1 r
(11)
Td =
1
1 + r2

current (fundamental): the rotating eld unbalance due to

the irregular coils distribution around the stator periphery is
considered acceptable.
TABLE I.

Base Em power
Base speed
Base voltage
Base current
MM electrical time constant
SM electrical time constant
Pole pair number
Slot number per phase per pole
Effective length
Stator diameter
Stator yoke thickness
Mechanical airgap
Rotor yoke thickness
Max magnet layer thickness
Remanent ux density
Slot width (s , tooth pitch)
Slot width opening
Slot-closing thickness
Slot depth
Linear load
Current density

Relation (11) clearly shows that the MM produces a motor

torque whereas, in order to damp the pulsating torque, the SM
produces a generator torque (except in case of negative value
for 3 /1 ratio, [9]).
To better quantify the effects of this damping control
strategy, a theoretical squarewave back-emf can be considered.
In this case, h equals 1 /h and the required SM to MM current
ratio is then r = 0.31. Therefore, according to equation (11),
the resulting torque is Td = 0.86Tb with the following torque
sharing: TMM = 0.96Tb and TSM = 0.10Tb. Thus, in order
to damp the pulsating torque, the SM produces a generator
torque that is almost 10% the MM motor torque.
If the damping control strategy is implemented, the machine ripple torque must be as low as possible. Consequently,
the cogging torque should also be reduced. One of the method
to satisfy this constraint is selecting a fractional-slot winding
[10]. In addition, the fractional-slot winding can naturally
mitigate the pulsating torque because the high order harmonic
of the air gap ux density are more ltered than with full polepitch integral-slot winding. For ve-phase machine, another
advantage conferred by fractional-slot winding relates to the
electrical time constant of the two virtual machines: these
two quantities have to be of the same order to facilitate
the third harmonic current injection when controlling the
voltage inverter with PWM [3]. Off course, the drawbacks
of fractional-slot winding distribution should also be remembered: the generating asynchronous rotating eld can induce
stator electromechanical stress and circulating currents in the
magnet layer [11].
III.

PARAMETERS FOR THE CONSIDERED MACHINE

Pem = 100kW
b = 700rpm
Vb = 204V
Ib = 102A
M M = 0.067s
SM = 0.052s
p=7
spp = 8/7
Lm = 0.270m
2Rs = 0.539m
tys = 0.024 m
g = 0.001m
tyr = 0.013m
hm = 0.003m
Br = 1.17T
0.5s
0.25s
tsc = 0.002m
ds = 0.019m
AL = 15 103 A/m
js = 3.7 106 A/m2

5phase fractionalslot winding

N =80 / p=7
s
kw,1=0.98
kw,3=0.86

M ARINE PROPELLER CASE STUDY

In this section, the damping control strategy previously

described is evaluated with considering the design specications of a marine propeller (100kW, 700rpm): very low
torque ripple at low speed is aimed for. A fractional-slot vephase winding is then selected. In the rst subsection, the
benets of this fractional-slot winding are checked by using
FEA software FEMM [12]. The next subsection evaluates the
proposed damping control strategy.

Fig. 1. Machine electromagnetic circuit with one phase distribution winding

A. Electromagnetic design

B. Damping control strategy evaluation

Table I gives the main electromagnetic parameters of the

ve-phase SPM machine under consideration. The fractionalslot winding with spp = 8/7 is illustrated by gure 1. The
winding factor for the fundamental (relative to the MM) and
the third harmonic (relative to the SM) are indicated: 0.98 and
0.86 respectively. With this winding distribution, the cogging
torque is almost negligible as it can be observed in gure 2:
the peak cogging torque is lower than 0.1% the base torque.
Furthermore, as expected, the two cylic inductances are really
close: the MM and SM electric time constants given in table I
are of the same order. To analyze the subharmonic issue in the
rotating eld, gure 3 shows the ux paths when the machine
(without any magnets layer) is supplied with ve-phase sinus

Figure 4-a shows the back-emf waveform and gure 4-b

shows the corresponding spectrum. Therefore, by considering
the amplitudes of harmonics 7th, 9th, 11th and 13th readable in
gure 4-b, the ratio r to reduce the rst harmonic of pulsating
torque can be estimated from relation (9): r equals 0.44.
According to relation (11), the average torque reduction with
the damping control is 0.79 (since 3 /1 = 0.29).
In a rst step, the torque is calculated as the dot product of
the numerical back-emfs (at 1rad/s) with the phase currents.
This semi-numerical method (called semi-FEA) allows to
estimate the electromagnetic torque: the cogging torque is not
included but, as shown by gure 2, this quantity is negligible.

000813

FEA: Cogging Torque

x 10

FEA: Backemf @ 1rad/s

6
3

Backemf (V/rad/s)

Cogging Torque (pu, Tb)

4
2

8
0

Fig. 2.

6
8
Mechanical Angle (deg)

10

12

14

30

60

90

120

150 180 210 240

Electrical Angle (deg)

270

300

330

360

23

25

(a) Back-emf waveform

Cogging torque estimation (according to FEMM)

FEA: Backemf @ 1rad/s

3

2.5

Magnitude (RMS, V/rad/s)

1.5

0.5
0.137
0.031

0.022

0
0.04
0.5

11
13
15
Harmonic order

17

19

21

(b) Back-emf spectrum

Fig. 4.

Fig. 3.

No load back-emf at 1rad/s mechanical speed

Flux density path with 5-phase sinus current (magnet removed)

Torque at base copper losses
1.2

With this no computationally time consuming approach, the

torque sharing between the two virtual machines when the
damping control is implemented can be represented. In gure
5, it can be observed how the SM pulsating torques compensate
the ones of the MM. The average torque is reduced by 21%
which complies with the analytical prediction (11).

0.8
Torque (pu, Tb)

As the average torque is reduced, the damping control is

interesting only if the resulting pulsating torques are lower
than the ones obtained when using a sinus control (only MM)
to generate the reduced average torque (0.79Tb ). The Torque
Ripple Factor (TRF) is introduced to quantify the level of
ripple: the Torque Ripple Factor is dened as the ratio of peakto-peak torque ripple to average torque [13]. Figure 6 allows
to check this point: according to the semi-numerical method,
the TRF is signicantly reduced from 5.5% to 2.0% (however,
this improvement can be counterbalanced by the loss increase
since the damping control require more current than the sinus
control to produce a given torque).

0.6

0.4
MM
SM
MM+SM

0.2

0.2
0

Fig. 5.

000814

30

60

90

120

150 180 210 240

Electrical Angle (deg)

270

300

330

360

Damping control of the SM at base copper losses (semi-FEA)

<T> =0.79T

0.85

d1 q1 -axis (MM) and d3 q3 -axis (SM) currents are regulated with PI controllers tuned according to [14] with
back-emf compensation

the speed loop is not considered (thus meaning that

the speed continuously equal the reference value)

the estimated torque is the electromagnetic torque

since the cogging torque is negligible.

MM alone: T / <T> =5.5%

MM + SM (damping): T / <T> =2%

0.84
0.83

Torque (pu, Tb)

0.82
0.81
0.8
0.79
0.78
0.77
0.76
0.75
0

30

60

90

120

150 180 210 240

Electrical Angle (deg)

270

300

330

360

Fig. 6. Sinus control (MM alone) and damping control comparison for the
same average torque (0.79Tb )

For the simulations, the machine produces an average torque

of
0.79Tb that corresponds to a rotating speed of 624rpm
( 0.79 the base speed 700rpm, because it is considered
that the torque is proportional to the square of the speed
in steady-state). Two control strategies are compared for this
point: the sinus control strategy (MM alone) and the damping
control strategy. Figure 8 shows the resulting phase-to-neutral
voltage, back-emf and machine current when the damping
control strategy is simulated.
<T>=0.79 Tb and =624rpm
2

<T> =0.79Tb
0.85

1.5

MM alone: T / <T> =7.5%

MM + SM (damping): T / <T> =3.6%

0.84

1
0.83

Amplitude (pu)

Torque (pu, T )

0.82
0.81
0.8

0.5

0.5
0.79

0.78

V /(0.5 V
a

DC

Ea/(2 Vb)

1.5

0.77

Ia/(2 Ib)
0.76
0.75
0

2
10

20

30
40
Electrical Angle

50

60

0.028

0.03

0.032

0.034
Time (s)

0.036

0.038

0.04

70

Fig. 7. Sinus control (MM alone) and damping control comparison (full FEA
estimation)

Another estimation of this expected TRF reduction is

performed. Two FEA of the machine are computed, each one
corresponding to 0.79pu torque: one with sinus control of the
MM and the other with the damping control. The resulting
torques (Maxwell tensor method) are given by gure 7. The
TRF reduction is conrmed: from 7.6% to 3.6%, which is more
than two times lower.
C. Inverter simulation
This subsection addresses the inverter simulation issue
in order to evaluate the effects of the real time control of
the currents. A time simulation of the drive is thus realized
(with Matlab/Simulink software). The following hypotheses are
taken:

the inverter is made with perfect switches and the DC

bus voltage continuously equals 750V

an intersective modulation based on a carrier signal at

5kHz is considered

Fig. 8.
Phase-to-neutral voltage, back-emf and current according to the
inverter simulation for damping control strategy

Figure 9 gives the torque sharing when the damping control

strategy is performed. As expected, the torque waveforms
are close to the ones presented in gure 6. Nevertheless the
compensation effect is not clear due to the commutation noises.
A Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is computed to check the low
frequency content reduction with the damping control strategy.
The results are given in gure 10 that shows the torque FFTs
for the sinus control (above) and for the damping control
(below): the rst harmonic cancellation (at 729Hz electrical
frequency) with the damping control is visible.
IV.

C ONCLUSION

This paper deals with the third harmonic current injection

in order to mitigate the pulsating torques for ve-phase SPM
machine. The multimachine decomposition is used to facilitate
the analysis: the virtual MM is the one corresponding to the
fundamental of the current whereas the virtual SM corresponds
to the third harmonic current. With this approach, an analytical
criterion is found to control the SM in order to mitigate the
pulsating torque generated by the MM: this criterion depends
on the back-emf spectrum and makes the SM operating as

000815

<T>=0.79 Tb and =624rpm

[2]

1.2

[3]

0.8

Torque (pu)

[4]
0.6

[5]

0.4
MM+SM
MM
SM

0.2

[6]

[7]
0.2

0.028

0.03

0.032

0.034
Time (s)

0.036

0.038

0.04

[8]
Fig. 9.

Torque balance with damping control strategy

<T>=0.79 T and =624rpm
b

[9]

1.5%
Amplitude (pu)

MM alone
1%

[10]
0.5%

[11]

1.5%
Amplitude (pu)

MM + SM damping

[12]

1%

[13]
0.5%

[14]
0

Fig. 10.

3
4
5
Electrical frequency (kHz)

Fast Fourier Analysis of the torques

generator to absorb the vibrations due to the MM operating as

motor. The effectiveness of the proposed approach relies on
the accuracy of the back-emf spectrum estimation and of the
real time control of the currents. The method is evaluated for
the design specications of a marine propeller. For reason as
simplicity, the rotor has a conventional full pole pitch magnet
layer. As very low ripples at low speed are required, the
machine is equipped with a fractional-slot winding to cancel
the cogging torque. The control strategy is assessed with FEA.
The numerical results conrm the signicant reduction of the
torque ripple factor: more than two times with reference to
the sinus control of the MM for the same average torque.
Time simulations of the drive conrm the positive effect of
this damping control strategy. Finally, the studied ve-phase
machine has the possibility of using the third harmonic to boost
the torque or to compensate the ripple torques.
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