IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 15, NO.

6, NOVEMBER 2000

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New Inverter Output Filter Topology for PWM Motor Drives

Yilmaz Sozer, David A. Torrey, Member, IEEE, and Suhan Reva, Member, IEEE
AbstractThis paper presents a new inverter output filter topology for pulse width modulation (PWM) motor drives. It is shown that the proposed filter effectively reduces high frequency harmonics which can cause serious damage to the motor bearings and insulation. The proposed filter is comprised of a conventional resistance, inductance, capacitance (RLC) network cascaded with an LC trap filter. The LC trap, tuned to the inverter switching frequency, is very effective in reducing the switching harmonics. By using this new topology the need for high damping resistance and low RLC cut-off frequency is eliminated. This reduces the phase shift in the current regulation loop and increases the filter efficiency. Experimental verification of the filter topology is provided with a 480 V inverter and a 25 hp permanent magnet synchronous motor. Space-vector predictive current regulation is implemented as an inner-loop current regulator for the outer-loop speed control using a digital signal processor. The effectiveness of the filter at different motor speeds is presented. Index TermsDifferential mode, inverter filters, PWM.

I. INTRODUCTION S POWER electronic devices improve, it becomes possible to operate the devices at higher switching frequencies. Although switching the power electronic devices more frequently improves the control bandwidth it brings on motor-related problems. The stress on the motor increases as the switching frequency increases. High frequency inverters have been shown to contribute to premature winding failures applied to the motor windings and bearing currents. High excite the parasitic coupling capacitances that produce bearing currents and contribute to electromagnetic compatibility concerns. There have been many methods proposed to overcome these problems [1][3]. The most common approach is to use an RLC filter network at the output of the inverter. The magnitude of harmonics at multiples of the switching frequency gives a measure of the stress being applied to the motor. Using a resistance, inductance, capacitance (RLC) network, the magnitude of the voltage harmonics at any particular frequency depends on the cut-off frequency and amount of damping being applied by the resistor. As the cut-off frequency is reduced and the damping

resistor value increases, the filtering becomes better. The reduction in the cut-off frequency, however, causes considerable delay in the outer and inner control loops. The value of resistor is the main cause in the reduced system efficiency. We propose to use an LC trap filter cascaded with the RLC network. The LC trap filter is tuned to the inverter switching frequency and is very effective in filtering the voltage harmonics at the switching frequency. It acts as an open circuit at the switching frequency, thereby eliminating the need to use a lower cut-off frequency and the correspondingly larger value of damping resistor. The RLC part of the proposed filter further reduces voltage harmonics at the switching frequency as well as the frequencies above the switching frequency. We have tested the proposed filter topology against the more conventional RLC filter, where the cut-off frequency of the RLC filter is adjusted as necessary to provide comparable overall attenuation at the switching frequency. Harmonic analysis and efficiency measurements are performed to show the effectiveness of the proposed filter against the more conventional RLC network. The experimental work was carried out on an inverter that supplies a 25 hp permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM). Fig. 1 shows the block diagram of the PMSM drive system. Section II discusses the design and analysis of the filter topologies. Section III gives experimental results. Conclusions are presented in Section IV. II. FILTER TOPLOLOGIES A. RLC Filter The RLC filter is the conventional approach used to filter the output from inverters with high switching frequency. It is necessary to model the electrical machine being used to facilitate filter design. The electrical dynamics of the permanent magnet synchronous motor can be described as [4], [5]

(1)
Manuscript received December 21, 1999; revised August 17, 2000. Recommended by Associate Editor H. Toliyat. Y. Sopzer is with Advanced Energy Conversion, LLC, Cohoes, NY 12047 USA. D. A Torrey is with the Department of Electric Power Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180-3590 USA. S. Reva is with the Research and Development Department, New Generation Motors Corporation, Ashburn, VA 20147 USA. Publisher Item Identifier S 0885-8993(00)09811-2.

where motor terminal voltages; motor phase currents; motor winding resistance;

00858993/00$10.00 2000 IEEE

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Fig. 1.

Block diagram of the PMSM drive system.

Fig. 3. Block diagram of the LC voltage trap inverter output filter. Fig. 2. Block diagram of conventional RLC type inverter output filter.

; self inductance; mutual inductance; back emf constant; rotor position; number of motor pole pairs; angular velocity. As we see from (1), the motor can be described as an inductance, resistance and a back emf voltage that varies with speed and rotor position. As we insert the inverter output RLC filter, some of current will pass through the RC branch of the filter rather than passing through the motor windings. The division of current depends on the frequency of operation. The impedance of the single phase motor winding is (2) The impedance of RC branch of the RLC filter is (3)

The design of the filter is set by the specifying the cut-off frequency of the filter, damping criteria, the resonant frequency of the motor winding with the filter capacitance, and the ratio of to at the operating frequency. For critically damped is circuit operation, (4) The resonant frequency of the motor winding with the filter should be adjusted so that the capacitance filter does not interfere with the outer control loop, so should be selected as (5) is the maximum frequency that the control loop is where able to reject. The corner frequency of the filter is given by (6)

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Fig. 4. Impedances of the LC trap filter with respect to operating frequency. Curves 1, 2, 3 are the responses of the first, second, and third component combinations given in Table I.

TABLE I FILTER COMPONENTS USED IN THE EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION

TABLE II FILTER COMPONENTS USED IN THE EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION

TABLE III MOTOR PARAMETERS

frequency harmonics are largely passed through the RC branch of the filter. Fig. 2 shows the RLC inverter output filter. B. LC Trap Filter The main purpose of using an LC trap filter is to prevent the switching frequency voltage harmonics from being applied to the motor. The voltage harmonics at the switching frequency create substantial stress on the motor terminals. The design of the LC voltage trap filter is very much dependent on inverter switching frequency. The impedance of the LC filter is given as (7)

Fig. 5. filter.

Block diagram of proposed LC trap with RLC type inverter output

should be a fraction of the motor winding impedance at the filter cut-off frequency so that currents at the switching

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Fig. 6. Inverter output and filter output voltages with LC trap filter, RLC filter and combination of LC and RLC filter at 350 rpm motor speed, and 145 Nm load torque.

Fig. 7. Inverter output and filter output voltages with LC trap filter, RLC filter and combination of LC and RLC filter at 700 rpm motor speed, and 145 Nm load torque.

If we select the components properly we make the filter impedance infinite at the switching frequency. The corner frequency of the filter is (8)

is chosen to be the same as the inverter switching frequency. Fig. 3 shows the LC voltage trap inverter output filter. and with the desired Although any combination of cut-off frequency presents an infinite impedance at the cut off frequency, the impedance of the filter at other frequencies is

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Fig. 8. Inverter output and filter output voltages with LC trap filter, RLC filter and combination of LC and RLC filter at 1150 rpm motor speed, and 145 Nm load torque.

Fig. 9. Filter output voltage harmonics with RLC filter and combination of LC and RLC filter at 350 rpm, 700 rpm, 1150 rpm motor speed, and 145 Nm load torque.

changing with the inductor and capacitor values. As we decrease the capacitor value we should increase the inductor value to keep the same corner frequency. This gives rise to increasing filter impedance in the vicinity of the corner frequency and increases the bandwidth of the filter.

There is a trade-off in increasing the inductor value. The impedance of the filter at the fundamental frequency also increases which is not the desired case. Fig. 4 shows the impedance of the trap filter with respect to operating frequency for three different combinations of component values. The

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Fig. 10. Inverter output and filter output voltage harmonics with LC trap filter, RLC filter and combination of LC and RLC filter at 350 rpm motor speed, and 145 Nm load torque.

Fig. 11. Inverter output and filter output voltage harmonics with LC trap filter, RLC filter and combination of LC and RLC filter at 700 rpm motor speed, and 145 Nm load torque.

values of the components are given in Table I. We have to select the component values which give a reasonable impedance at the fundamental frequency and enough filter bandwidth around the corner frequency.

C. LC Trap with RLC Filter The combination of the LC voltage trap with RLC network is the best candidate for efficient and effective output voltage

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Fig. 12. Inverter output and filter output voltage harmonics with LC trap filter, RLC filter and combination of LC and RLC filter at 1150 rpm motor speed, and 145 Nm load torque.

filtering. As the LC trap suppresses the inverter switching frequency harmonics the RLC part further suppresses the switching frequency as well as the harmonics at multiples of the switching frequency. With this new configuration it is possible to get very effective filtering without using a low cut-off frequency for the RLC network and the correspondingly high value of damping resistor. Fig. 5 shows the LC voltage trap cascaded with the RLC output filter. The series trap can also be placed after the RLC filter. In simulation studies we have seen that the peak to peak ripple voltage across the motor terminals tends to increase when the trap filter is between RLC filter and motor terminals. This is why we put LC trap filter between RLC network and the inverter. III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS The size of the filter components have been designed consis950 Hz, is chosen tent with the previous section. For is chosen as 0.27 mH to set to 4.3 kHz. is as 5 F. calculated as 11 to get appropriate damping for the network. The LC trap inductor and capacitor are chosen to suppress the 13.7 kHz switching frequency. The values are given in Table II. The parameters of the motor used in experiments are given in Table III. The inductors used in the experimental implementation are single-phase. It may be possible to shrink the size of the inductors by using three-phase inductors, but this has not been investigated here. The performance of the different filter topologies was experimentally tested on a 25 hp 1150 rpm PMSM. The control of the motor is implemented using a digital signal processor. Input power is derived from a 3-phase 480 V utility supply

TABLE IV LINE-TO-LINE VOLTAGE HARMONICS IF INVERTER OUTPUT AND FILTER OUTPUT FOR DIFFERENT FILTER TOPOLOGIES AT 350 RPM AND 184 V FUNDAMENTAL

TABLE V LINE-TO-LINE VOLTAGE HARMONICS OF INVERTER OUTPUT AND FILTER OUTPUT FOR DIFFERENT FILTER TOPOLOGIES AT 700 RPM AND 244 V FUNDAMENTAL

TABLE VI LINE-TO-LINE VOLTAGE HARMONICS OF INVERTER OUTPUT AND FILTER OUTPUT FOR DIFFERENT FILTER TOPOLOGIES AT 1150 RPM AND 535 V FUNDAMENTAL

processed by an uncontrolled rectifier. The dc bus voltage is 650 V throughout operation. The motor is coupled to an eddy current brake which is able to provide constant load torque

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Fig. 13. torque.

Filter output voltage harmonics with RLC filter and combination of LC and RLC filter at 350 rpm, 700 rpm, 1150 rpm motor speed, and 145 Nm load

Fig. 14. torque.

Filter output voltage harmonics with RLC filter and combination of LC and RLC filter at 350 rpm, 700 rpm, 1150 rpm motor speed, and 145 Nm load

throughout operation. The motor speed is kept constant using a PI speed control. Three-phase reference currents are generated using field oriented control. The reference currents drive a predictive space-vector control. This control is very effective

in countering the delay in the system and provides very stable operation in the presence of the output filter elements. The tests were performed at 350 rpm, 700 rpm, and 1150 rpm at a constant load of 145 Nm. The fundamental output frequency

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Fig. 15.

Efficiencies of the RLC filter and combination of LC and RLC filter at 350 rpm, 700 rpm, 1150 rpm motor speed, and 145 Nm load torque.

TABLE VII FILTER OUTPUT VOLTAGE HARMONICS WITH RLC FILTER AND COMBINATION OF LC AND RLC FILTER AT 350 RPM, 700 RPM, AND 1150 RPM

of the inverter at these speeds is 17.5 Hz, 35 Hz, and 57.5 Hz, respectively. Figs. 68 show the line-to-line voltage of the inverter output, and line-to-line voltages of the filter output with the three different filter topologies. Fig. 9 shows the fine detail of the filter output voltage. In each case the combination of trap with RLC network shows much less ripple than the RLC filter alone. As seen from these figures, the magnitude of the voltage peaks applied to the motor is minimized with the LC trap cascaded with RLC network. FFT analysis of the output voltage waveforms is presented in Figs. 1012. The LC trap is effective in reducing switching frequency voltage harmonics. The cascaded filter performs best in reducing both switching and the multiple of switching harmonics. The harmonic content of the voltages are presented in Tables IVVI. The rating of the filter components are consistent with the maximum voltage across the terminals and the through rms currents. For rated conditions, the rms current through the induc-

tors is 25 A, through the trap capacitor 11 A, and through the RC branch 5 A. We have further compared the combined filter topology against the RLC network having updated component values. In order to get same amount of filtering we decreased the cut-off frequency of the conventional RLC network. The new is is 20 and is the same 5 F for a cut-off 1.2 mH, frequency of 2 kHz. Figs. 13 and 14 show the comparison of the combined filter topology and the updated conventional RLC filter at different motor speeds. The harmonic content of the line-to-line output filter voltages is shown in Table VII. The combined filter performance is better at the switching frequency and the RLC filter is better at twice the switching frequency. The overall effectiveness of the two filters are close to each other. We have performed efficiency measurements of these two topologies at different operating points. Here the efficiency comparisons are performed where the combined filter topology has the component values given in Table II and the updated RLC filter which has 2 kHz cut-off frequency. The RLC filter being used here has higher inductance and larger damping resistor to give filtering comparable to the combined filter topology. Although the combined filter has larger number of elements, the values and the size of the filter elements are much smaller for a comparable filtering effort. As seen from Fig. 15, the combined filter topology provides better efficiency than the RLC filter alone. For the 17.5 kW of output power the proposed filter consumes 595 W, while the conventional RLC network consumes 770 W. This is due to the smaller damping resistor value in the combined filter and the reduced current flow through the series RC for the combined topology. In order to perform precise efficiency measurements two line-to-line voltages and two phase currents are measured to

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Fig. 16.

Configuration of the oscilloscopes for evaluating the inverter output filters.

Fig. 17. Comparison of the simulated reference current (dashed line), the actual current with combined filter (dotted line), and the actual current with RLC filter (solid line).

calculate the power leaving the inverter and leaving the filter. The line-to-line voltages are measured with differential voltage probes. The phase currents are measured with Hall-effect current probes. Waveform data are transferred from the two oscilloscopes to Labview and post-processed in Matlab. The measurement setup of the oscilloscopes is shown in Fig. 16. The power in each stage is calculated as (9)

and the efficiency is (10) where the output power is that power leaving the filter and the input power is that power leaving the inverter. In order to compare the phase shift of the two filter topology we have performed circuit simulations using the SABER simulator. The Saber motor model is developed based on finite el-

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ement analysis. Fig. 17 shows the reference current and actual motor currents with the two different filter topologies. We can see that the proposed filter slightly reduces the delay in the current regulation compared to RLC network alone. IV. SUMMARY The proposed filter topology is based on the cascade connection of an LC resonant tank and a conventional RLC filter. The resonant tank is tuned to the inverter switching frequency to trap voltage harmonics at the switching frequency. The RLC filter is thereby relieved of operating with a low cut-off frequency, making its operation more efficient. The filter topology is tested along with the conventional RLC filter topology. The test platform consists of a 25 hp PMSM motor drive coupled to an eddy current brake load. The control of the motor is handled by a DSP. The predictive current regulator is implemented to provide optimum performance in countering any delay caused by the filter elements. The comparison of the standard RLC filter with the cascaded LC/RLC combination is presented and discussed. The new filter topology provides very effective filtering at and above the inverter PWM switching frequency without requiring a low cut-off frequency and the associated high damping resistor value as in the case of the conventional RLC type filter. The proposed filter topology provides efficient and effective filtering. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank the reviewers who helped to improve this paper through their constructive criticism. REFERENCES
[1] J. M. Erdman, R. J. Kerkman, D. W. Schlegel, and G. L. Skibinski, Effect of PWM inverters on AC motor bearing currents and shaft voltages, IEEE Trans. Ind. Applcat., vol. 32, pp. 250259, Mar./Apr. 1996. [2] S. Chen, T. A. Lipo, and D. W. Novotny, Circulating type motor bearing current in inverter drives, IEEE Ind. Applicat. Soc. Annu. Meeting, vol. 1, pp. 162167, Oct. 1996. [3] D. Rendusara and P. Enjeti, New inverter output filter configuration reduces common mode and differential mode dv=dt at the motor terminals in PWM drive systems, in Proc. IEEE Power Elec. Spec. Conf., vol. 2, 1997, pp. 12691275. [4] T. M. Jahns, Motion control with permanent-magnet AC machines, Proc. IEEE, vol. 82, pp. 12411252, Aug. 1994.

[5] Y. Sozer and D. A. Torrey, Adaptive flux weakening control of permanent magnet synchronous motors, IEEE Ind. Appl. Soc. Annu. Meeting, vol. 1, pp. 475482, Oct. 1998.

Yilmaz Sozer received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, and the M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in electric power engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Troy, NY. His doctoral work at RPI was concerned with direct adaptive control of both brushless dc and permanent magnet synchronous motors. He is with Advanced Energy Conversion, LLC, Cohoes, NY. His development activities at Advanced Energy Conversion are leading to the application of sophisticated excitation and control algorithms to switched-reluctance and brushless dc technology.

David A. Torrey (S80M88) received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, and the S.M., E.E., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA. He spent three and a half years on the faculty at Worcester Polytechnic Institute before joining the faculty at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, where he is the holder of the Niagara Mohawk Power Electronics Research Chair and an Associate Professor in the Departments of Electric Power Engineering and Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering. His research activities are focused on all aspects of electric machine systems, with emphasis on switched-reluctance and brushless dc technology. Dr. Torrey is a member of Sigma Xi, Tau Beta Pi, and Eta Kappa Nu. He has been involved in IEEE activities which support power electronics through the Applied Power Electronics Conference. He is a Registered Professional Engineer in New York State.

Suhan Reva (M99) was born in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1972. He received the B.S. degree from Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, in 1993 and the M.S. degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY, in 1997, both in electric power engineering. He joined the Research and Development Department, New Generation Motors Corporation, Ashburn, VA, in 1998. His research interests are design, simulation, and development of axial flux brushless dc and ac motors, power electronic drive systems, and microcontroller based vehicle interface modules as applied to electric and hybrid electric vehicles.