International Conference on Innovative Mechanisms for Industry Applications
(ICIMIA 2017)
An Intelligent Fuzzy Sliding Mode Controller for a
BLDC Motor
Arun Prasad K.M, Usha Nair
Cochin University of Science and Technology
Kochi, India
Abstract— Brushless DC (BLDC) motors are one of the most
widely used motors, not only because of their efficiency, and
torque characteristics, but also because they have the advantages
of being a direct current (DC) supplied, eliminating the
disadvantages of using Brushes. BLDC motors have a very wide
range of speed, so speed control is a very important issue for it.
S liding mode control (S MC) is one of the popular strategies to
deal with uncertain control systems. The Fuzzy S liding Mode
Controller (FS MC) combines the intelligence of a fuzzy inference
system with the sliding mode controller. In this paper, an
intelligent Fuzzy S liding Mode controller for the speed control of
BLDC motor is proposed. The mathematical model of the BLDC
motor is developed and it is used to examine the performance of
this controller. Conventionally PI controllers are used for the
speed control of the BLDC motor. When Fuzzy S MC is used for
the speed control of BLDC motor, the peak overshoot is
completely eliminated which is 3% with PI controller. Also the
rise time is reduced from 23 ms to 4 ms and the settling time is
reduced from 46 ms to 4 ms by applying FMS MC. This paper
emphasizes on the effectiveness of speed control of BLDC motor
with Fuzzy S liding Mode Controller and its merit over
conventional PI controller.
Keywords— BLDC motors, Sliding Mode Control, Fuzzy
Sliding Mode controller, PI Controller
I. INT RODUCT ION
Brushless DC Motors (BLDC) are commonly used in
many applications such as automotive, computer, industrial,
aerospace etc. BLDC Motors have several advantages over
brushed DC Motor. They have lower maintenance due to the
elimination of the mechanical commutator and they have a
high power density which makes them ideal for high torque to
weight ratio applications [1][2]. Compared to induction
machines, they have lower inertia allowing for faster dynamic
response to reference commands. Also, they are more efficient
due to the permanent magnets which results in virtually zero
rotor losses [3][4].
Due to overweighing merits of this motor, modeling is
done in order to enhance the performance of the system.
Modeling of BLDC Motor by using any particular control
scheme is beneficial in carrying out the comprehensive
simulation studies and further practical implementation [5]
[6]. SIMULINK/ MATLAB environment provides accurate
behavior of the system in reality.
Sliding mode control (SMC) is one of the popular
strategies to deal with uncertain control systems [7]. The main
feature of SMC is the robustness against parameter variations
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and external disturbances. SMC has been success fully
implemented to control drive systems like DC motor and
BLDC motor [8][9].
Over the past few years, fuzzy set theory [10] has been
successfully applied to implementing fuzzy logic controllers
(FLC) that express feedback control laws using heuristic
knowledge, without knowing parameters of the control p lants,
for many practical industrial control systems [11]. Fuzzy
Logic control is one of the popular strategies to deal with
uncertain control systems. Nowadays, the quest for new
controllers which provide functionality and guarantee precise
performance has led the technology into the field of Fuzzy
Logic [12][13].
PI controller and SMC are independently applied and the
results are evaluated for the performance of BLDC motor in
many literatures. But no attempt has ever been carried out by
combining the intelligence of fuzzy logic with the sliding
mode controller for this purpose. This work presents a
comparative study on the speed control of brushless DC motor
using a Fuzzy Sliding Mode controller and conventional PI
controller. The mathematical model of the BLDC Motor is
developed and it is used to examine the performance of the
controllers. A PI controller is developed for the speed control
of the BLDC Motor, and then a Fuzzy Sliding Mode
Controller is designed for the same.
II. M AT HEMAT ICAL M ODELLING OF A BLDC M OT OR
A BLDC motor is a permanent magnet motor which uses
position detectors and inverters to control the speed and
current. There are two types of BLDC motors based on the
waveform of back EMF, namely sinusoidal type and
trapezoidal type. The sinusoidal type BLDC motors are known
as the permanent magnet synchronous motor. The motors with
trapezoidal back EMF are known as simply BLDC motors.
To make the motor rotate the coils are energized (or
activated) in a predefined sequence, making the motor turn in
one direction, say clockwise. Running the sequence in reverse
order makes the motor run in the opposite direction. One
should understand that the sequence defines the direction of
the current flow in the coils and thereby the magnetic field
generated by the individual coils. The direction of the current
determines the orientation of the magnetic field generated by
the coil.
The three phase BLDC motor is operated in a two phase on
fashion. The signals from the Hall Effect position sensors
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 International Conference on Innovative Mechanisms for Industry Applications
(ICIMIA 2017)

produce a three digit number which changes every 60 degrees. controller either Fuzzy Sliding Mode Controller or PI gives
The simplified block diagram of a BLDC drive system is control signal to the converter or DC source according to the
shown in fig.1 error signal. The speed of the motor is controlled by the
converter by varying the DC voltage

Fig 2: Block diagram of BLDC speed control.

Fig 1: Simplified BLDC drive system

IV. FUZZY SLIDING M ODE CONT ROL

A. Mathematical Modelling of BLDC Sliding mode control is a non-linear control technique and
intelligence can be added to this controller by combining the
A three phase star connected BLDC motor can be fuzzy logic to the conventional sliding mode control.
represented by the following equations.
A. Sliding mode control
d Sliding mode control (SMC) has a proved history of its
vab R (ia  ib )  L (ia  ib )  ea  eb (1)
performance. The design of SMC is simple and it is robust
dt
against variation in process dynamics and external
d disturbances.
vbc R (ib  ic )  L (ib  ic )  eb  ec (2) A Sliding Mode Controller is a discontinuous controller
dt and is also known as a Variable Structure Controller (VSC).
In a VSC there are several subsystems and switching between
d
vca R (ic  ia )  L (ic  ia )  ec  ea (3) these subsystems are done in order to bring the plant states to
dt a user defined surface called sliding surface. Usually the
switching among the subsystems is determined by using a
dZ switching function. The basic control law of the sliding mode
T J  BZ  TL (4) controller is given by:
dt
u ksign(s) (7)
Where ܴܽ is the stator resistance, ‫ ܽܮ‬is the phase
where s is the switching function, k is a constant parameter
inductance, ݁ܽ is the back EMF, and ݅ܽ is the phase current of
and sign (·) is the sign function.
the “A” phase. T is the torque developed, TL is the load torque, The main disadvantage in conventional SMC is chattering,
J is the moment of inertia and B is the friction coefficient. which is a phenomenon of high frequency oscillation in the
The selected motor parameters are given in table I output, due to the high frequency switching between the
functions. Chattering adversely affects the performance of the
T ABLE I BLDC P ARAMETERS
system significantly. Using a signum function often causes
Motor Parameters Rating
chattering in the system. One of the solutions to overcome this
Rated speed 3000 rpm
is to introduce a boundary layer around the switch ing surface.
Rated torque 3Nm The chattering in the sliding mode controller can be reduced
No of stator pole pairs 4
by modifying the control law in as u ksat (s / I ) and
Stator Resistance (R) 2.875 ohm
Stator inductance (l) 0.0085H constant factor I defines the thickness of the boundary layer
Maximum flux linkage (ψm) 0.175 wb around the switching surface. sat (s / I ) is a saturation
Voltage Constant 146.6
function that is defined as:
T orque constant 1.4
Moment of inertia (J) 0.0008 ­s s
Viscous friction coefficient (B) 0.001 ° if d1
°I I
sat ( s / I ) ® (8)
III. SPEED CONT ROL OF BLDC M OT OR
°sgn(s / I ) s
if !1
The block diagram of the control scheme of a BLDC °¯ I
Motor is given in fig 2. The position of rotor is sensed by the
The above control law guarantees the system trajectories
Hall Effect sensors and the gate pulse generator generates the move toward and stay on the sliding surface s = 0 from any
gating signal corresponding to the rotor position. Error initial condition, if the following condition is satisfied:
detector compares reference speed and actual speed to
generate error signal which is given to controller block. The ss d K s (9)

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 International Conference on Innovative Mechanisms for Industry Applications
(ICIMIA 2017)

where η is a positive constant that makes the system

trajectories meet the sliding surface in a finite time. The value
of I is taken as unity. The above controller is actually a
continuous approximation of an ideal relay control. The
invariance of sliding mode control is eliminated using this
control scheme. The system robustness is become as a
function of the width of the boundary layer. The control law of
SMC of a plant of any order reduces the error and the
derivative of error to zero. The switching surface of the SMC Fig .3 Block diagram of a Fuzzy Logic Controller
determines the transient response of the system if the sliding C. The basic Fuzzy Sliding Mode Control with triangular
mode exists. The error in the rotor speed of the machine is membership functions
used to generate the switching surface and is given by
Control law of SMC is u ksign(s) given by eqn (7).
e( k ) Zref (k )  Z (k ) (10)
The performance of the sliding mode controller can be
where, ω(k) and ωref (k) are the actual speed and the improved if the constant k in the control law is intelligently
desired reference speed respectively and e(k) and k are the varied according to the variation in the error signal and the
error in speed and the sampling interval respectively. The rate of change of error signal. The sliding surface signal s and
sliding surface (s) is defined with the tracking error e, its rate
its rate of change s are taken as the input to the fuzzy system
of change of e and its integral ( ³ edt ). The sliding surface and the value of k is the output of the fuzzy system.
is given by The input membership function for s and s are given in
s e  O1e  O2 ³ edt (11) fig.4and fig.5 respectively. Triangular membership functions
are used and the universe of disclosure is taken as -5 0 to 50
where λ 1 and λ 2 surface parameters. The values of λ 1 and λ 2 for s and -10 to 10 for ds/dt. The output membership function
determine the slope of the sliding surface and one of the is given in fig.6. Triangular and trapezoidal membership
conditions for the existence of sliding surface is that λ 1 and λ 2 functions are used as output membership functions for de-
are strictly positive real constants. The values of λ 1 and λ 2 are fuzzification and the universe of disclosure is taken as and 0.5
selected by using trial and error so that the surface has a to 1.5. The fuzzy rules are given in in table II.
positive slope. Also these values should satisfy equation (9).
Hence the values of λ 1 and λ 2 are selected as 10 and 20
respectively which are strictly positive and satisfies the
equation
B. Fuzzy Logic
Fuzzy set theory, proposed by Lotfy A. Zadeh in 1965,
emerged as a tool to deal with uncertain, imprecise, or
qualitative decision-making problems. Fuzzy logic controllers
(FLC), which are based on the fuzzy set theory, are very
simple and easy to design. An FLC consist of a fuzzification
unit, a decision making unit, and a de-fuzzification unit as Fig.4 Input membership function‘s’
shown in fig.3. The fuzzification unit converts the real inputs
to corresponding fuzzy values by using appropriate input
membership functions. The decision making unit performs the
inference operation and generate the fuzzy output and it is
based on a number of logic statements called fuzzy rules, in
the form of IF-THEN statements. The number of fuzzy rules
depends on the number of input membership functions. Then
de-fuzzification unit converts the fuzzy output back into the
crisp or real control output values using the output
membership functions. There are several methods for
defuzzification and the centroid method is most popular
method, which is used in this paper. The commonly used Fig. 5 Input membership function ‘ds/dt ’
shape of membership functions is triangular, although
Gaussian (or bell shaped) and trapezoidal membership
functions are also used.

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The system is simulated using fuzzy sliding mode controller

and PI controller with the tuned values of Kp and Ki of 1.3 and
16.6 respectively. A load torque of 3 Nm is applied at 0.08
seconds after starting in both cases. Fig.7 shows the step
response of the system with fuzzy SMC and conventional PI
controller respectively for a reference speed of 3000 rpm. The
performance comparison is given in table III. It is observed
that the rise time with proper tuning of PI controller is 23 ms
which is reduced to 4 ms with FSMC. The peak overshoot is
Fig. 6 Output membership function ‘K Fuzzy’ completely eliminated with FSMC which is 3% with PI
controller. Moreover the settling time of 46 ms with PI
controller is reduced to 4 ms with FSMC. With PI controller
T ABLE II. FUZZY RULES the motor shows fluctuation in speed when load is suddenly
S applied at 0.08 sec whereas it is eliminated when the fuzzy
sdot NB NS Z PS PB
sliding mode controller is used. The rise time is reduced due to
N B M M S B the fast action of sliding mode controller. The SMC is made
Z B M S M B chatter free by proper modification in the design. The peak
overshoot and settling time are reduced by intelligently
P B S M M B
varying its controller gain using a properly tuned fuzzy
inference system. Moreover the speed variation while loading
is eliminated and this shows the robustness of the SMC. Fig. 8
V. PID CONT ROLLER shows the current waveform in the three phases. It is observed
The control law of a of PID controller in the time domain that the starting current is slightly higher with fuzzy SMC than
is given in eqn (12) that with PI controller. From the results it is clear that a fuzzy
sliding mode controller can perform better than that of a
ª de(t ) 1 º conventional PI controller in terms of rise time, overshoot,
u(t ) K p «e(t )  Td  ³ e(t )dt » (12) settling time, fluctuation in speed while loading suddenly.
¬ dt Ti ¼
Step Response Fuzzy SMC and PI Controller

Where u(t) is the control signal, e(t) is the error signal i.e. 3000

the difference between reference input and output, Kp is the

proportional gain Td is the derivative time constant and Ti is 2500

the integral time constant. The characteristics of the response 2000

of the system are affected by each of these coefficients. These

speed

1500

parameters are to be accurately tuned, in order to get the

desired performance characteristics of the system. The tuning 1000

of the PID controller is a complex process due to its iterative 500

nature. Zeigler-Nichol’s tuning algorithm is one of the most

with Fuzzy SMC
with PI

popular methods for tuning PID controllers. 0

0 0.02 0.04 0.06
time
0.08 0.1 0.12

A. PI Controller Fig 7: Step response with Fuzzy SM C and Fuzzy PI and PI

PI controllers are one of the most commonly used controllers
controllers in industry today. A controller without derivative
mode is used when noise and large disturbances are present
during operation of the process. The drive systems are
subjected to large disturbances so PI controllers are used to with Fuzzy SMC
with PI
Current in phase A

40

control drive systems. The controller is tuned according to the 20

Zeigler-Nichol’s tuning algorithm. The control law of a PI 0

controller is given by eqn (13)

-20
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12
time
Current in phase B

40

ª 1 º (13)
20

u (t ) K p «e(t )  ³ e(t )dt » 0

¬ Ti ¼ -20
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12
time
Current
Current in phase C

20

VI. RESULT S & DISCUSSION 0

-20

The Fuzzy Sliding Mode Controller for the speed control -40
0 0.02 0.04 0.06
time
0.08 0.1 0.12

of a BLDC motor is implemented in MATLAB/Simulink and

the results are compared with that of a conventional PI Fig 8: Current in the three phases
Controller. The simulation is conducted on a BLDC motor
whose parameters are given in table I.

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 International Conference on Innovative Mechanisms for Industry Applications
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[7] K. D. Young, V. I. Utkin, and Ü. Özgüner, “A control engineer's guide

T ABLE III. P ERFORMANCE COMP ARISON to sliding mode control,” IEEE Trans. Control Sys. Tech., vol. 7, 1999,
pp. 328-342, 1999.
Fuzzy PI
[8] V.I.Utkin, “Sliding mode control design principles and applications to
SMC electric drives,” IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, vol.40,
Rise time 4 ms 23ms no.1, pp.23-26, February 1993.
Peak overshoot 0% 3% [9] H. S. Choi, Y. H. Park, Y. S. Cho, and M. Lee, “Global sliding-mode
S ettling time 4ms 46ms control improved design for a brushless DC motor,” IEEE Control
Momentary speed Systems Magazine, vol. 21, pp. 27-35, 2001.
0% 5%
variation when [10] L. A. Zadeh, "Fuzzy Sets," Information and control, Vol. 8, 1965, pp.
suddenly load is 338-353
applied [11] E. H. Mamdani, “ Application of fuzzy algorithms for the control of a
dynamic plant”, Proceedings of IEEE, 121, pp. 1585-1588, 1974.
[12] J.-S. R. Jang, C.-T . Sun and E. Mizutani, “ Neuro-Fuzzy and Soft
Computing”, Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1997.
VII. CONCLUSIONS [13] J.Maiers and Y. S. Sherif, "Applications of Fuzzy Set T heory,"
Computers, .April 1988, pp. 83-92.

Fuzzy sliding mode controller for the speed control of

BLDC motor is designed and its performance comparison with
PI controller is carried out in this paper. Conventionally PI
controllers are used for the speed control of BLDC motor and
they give moderate performance under undisturbed conditions
even though they are very simple to design and easy to
implement. But their performance is poor under disturbed
condition like sudden changes in reference speed and sudden
change in load. The BLDC motor with PI controller s hows
large overshoot, high settling time and comparatively large
speed variation under loaded condition.
The Fuzzy Sliding Mode Controller combines the
intelligence of fuzzy logic with the Sliding Mode technique.
The peak overshoot is completely eliminated and the rise time
and settling time are improved when Fuzzy SMC is applied
for the speed control of BLDC motor. The fluctuation in speed
of the motor under loaded condition is also reduced when
fuzzy SMC is applied. Thus this controller becomes an ideal
choice for applications where very precise and fine control is
required.

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