Application of MATLAB/SIMULINK and PSPICE Simulation in Teaching Power Electronics and Electric Drive System

Department of Automation, Anhui University, Hefei 230039, China School of Electrical Engineering & automation, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, 230009 China which enable students to perform system simulation, identification, and control. The Power System Blockset (PSB) toolbox features electrical models of power semiconductors and the most commonly used power devices (machine, transforms, power lines, voltage sources), and allows simulation of power electronics and electric drive system [2]. The PSB is well suited to the simulation of medium size power systems and power electronics using variable or fixed step algorithms from SIMULIK. The PSB libraries contain basic elements as well as many ready-built sub-systems. Control system using SIMULINK blocks can be naturally integrated into the power electronics and driver system model. Computation capabilities of MATLAB/SIMULINK can be advantageously exploited in post-processing of simulation results. Simulation results are displayed on SIMULINK Scopes while the simulation is running. Students can access a variety of MATLAB functions and toolboxes for processing and plotting of waveforms stored in the MATLAB workspace. This paper is divided into two major sections as follow: The first section is using PSPICE designing and analyzing a RCD snubber circuit and three-phase DC/AC inverter. All simulation described in this section are completed by using the Microsoft Windows student version 9.1 of PSPICE. The schematic capture facility is used and a circuit schematic is developed for each design using the graphical schematic editor as an input file to the simulator. In second section, simulation and analyzing of a vector control of induction motors drive system using MATLAB/SIMULINK is given. II. EXAMPLE BASED ON SPICE PSPICE is a very popular circuit simulation program of available device models and affordability. An evaluation version of PSPICE is available to students through Microsim Corporation. PSPICE outputs a text and data file. The text file reports all the request results and shows any errors that occur during simulation. The data file is used as an input to the graphic postprocessor program, a waveform analyzer knows as Probe [1]. PSPICE is well suited for device-level modeling of small size systems: study of voltages and currents in power converters, snubber circuit design, study of transformer transients, etc. Also, PSPICE performs well for systemlevel modeling of small size power systems. A. Snubber for Boost-buck Circuit If a power electronic converter stresses a power switch device beyond its ratings, there are two basic ways
1

Tao Zhao1, Qunjing Wang2

AbstractNowadays computer simulation has been an important tool in teaching. In this paper, MATLAB /SIMULINK and PSPICE are used to deepen the undergraduate students understanding of power electronics and electric drive system. The RCD snubber circuit, DC/AC three-phase inverter circuit and the vector control system of induction motor are been designed and analyzed using PSPICE and MATLAB/SIMULINK respectively. The performance of various designs are tested by plotting the current, voltage, speed response and other waveforms using the graphics postprocessor Probe and MATLAB workspace. The examples can be implemented in class and in class projects or undergraduate design projects. The response was positive. Key wordsEducation technology, power electronics, electric drive system, MATLAB/SIMULINK, PSPICE

I. INTRODUCTION The power electronics and electric drive system is one of the most important fundamental courses for undergraduate student of electrical engineering and automation major. Teaching a course in power electronics and electric drive system is, however, challenging, since the field is quite broad and includes fundamentals from a wide variety of areas of engineering. These areas include, but are not limited to, control systems, electromagnetics, semiconductor devices, electric machinery and digital signal processing. On the other hand, compared with past, owing to the increasing courses for the students, teaching time of every course is reduced. In order to overcome this challenge, the computer simulation has been an important tool to simplify teaching and to introduce student to solve real-world engineering problems. Students are allowed to vary the circuit parameters and to examine the effect of these changes on the electrical variables. This process is equivalent to the creation of a virtual laboratory where the computer screen replaces the oscilloscope in a real laboratory environment. Nowadays, a variety of software tools, such as SABER, SIMPLORER, PSPICE, MATLAB, etc., is available to simulate power electronics circuit and electric drive system. Considering the follow some causes, the MATLAB/SIMULINK and PSPICE are been used as tools for the application of teaching power electronics and electric drive system is this paper. MATLAB/SIMULINK is widely used for the simulation of almost all types of dynamic systems. This software package is also valuable for teaching and learning since it provides a series of standard routines and software toolboxes, such as control toolboxes, system identification blocks, and neural networks block set, etc,

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of relieving the problem. Either the device can be replace with on whose ratings exceed the stresses or snubber circuits can be added to the basic can be added to the basic converter to reduce the stresses to safe levels. In hard switching inducting inductive load circuits the di/dt stress is severity especially. The snubber circuits are be used to protect the switch device by improving their switching trajectory. A boost-buck converter with RCD snubber is used to illustrate the approach, the boost-buck shown in Fig. 1, is a DC to DC converter. The circuit consists of an insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) or other active switches, a fast recovery diode, an inductor L1, a capacitor C1and a load resistance Rload. A control signal is applied to the active switch to turn it ON or OFF. After mastering the basic idea behind the buck convert, students will be asked to examine the effect of using RCD snubber circuit with different parameters.

Fig. 2. Waveform of voltage and current

Fig. 1. Input schematic of Buck-boost converter with RCD snubber circuit

Fig. 1 shows the input schematic file of the boostbuck converter. The design parameters are chosen to be V=540V, L1=1H, C1=100uF, Rload=2.7 , snubber resistance Rs=10 , Cs=2.0u, stray inductance Lm=10uH.The active switch is modeled as a voltagecontrolled switch, the control signal is pulse signal, which parameters are given in Table1. (Some parameters selected above come from a real project that author have been done.)
TABLE I PARAMETERS OF PULSE SIGNAL

The presence of stay inductances results is an over voltage since di/dt is negative. Another important command found in PSPICE is the .STEP command, which allows one to perform a parametric variation analysis on all input parameters. For example, students can investigate effect for different snubber capacitor. Fig. 3 shows switch peak voltage for different capacitor value. Fig. 4 shows the waveforms of snubber resistance current at different resistance value. The resistance value should be chosen so that the peak current isnt increase stress of switch when switch turns ON. On the other hand, the capacitor should have sufficient time to discharge down to a low voltage. Rs is chosen using Eq.3. From the Fig. 4, it is evident that it is usually better to reduce transient voltage with improved power circuit layout and /or snubber designs.
2 C S V CE L I2 max = m 2 2

(2)

RS <
-5V 10v

t on 2.3C S

(3)

V1 V2 Per Pw Tf Tr

200us 100us 1us 2us

Now, students can observer the voltage and current waveforms when switch turns ON or OFF. Fig. 2 shows the waveforms of switch voltage, snubber capacitor Cs charge, discharge current, and Rs current. The switch voltage can be expressed as

Fig. 3. Vce Voltage for different snubber capacitor

vCE = V1 + VC Lm

di dt

(1)

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Fig. 4. Current for different snubber resistance

Fig. 5. DC/AC inverter circuit

B. DC/AC Inverter Circuit The three-phase DC/AC inverter circuit is shown in Fig. 5, which includes control circuit, inverter and load. In this example, students are interested in the pulse with modulation (PWM) control technology. The PWM method is based on the comparison of the modulating wave with a triangular carrier waveform. The point of intersection determines the switching points of the power devices. In three-phase system, a common carrier can be used for three phases. In this paper, the triangular carrier waveform is generated from analog behavior modeling (ABM) [2], the only one sinusoidal waveform is based on signal source. The three-phase signal formula used as follows:

The modulation waveforms of SPWM and THIPWM and triangular carrier are shown in Fig. 6

Fig. 6. The waveforms of modulation and carrier

u Ar = A sin( wt ) + B sin(3wt ) u Br = A sin( wt 120) + B sin(3wt ) u = A sin( wt + 120) + B sin(3wt ) Cr

(4)

The output voltage and current can be investigated for different parameters. Fig. 7 shows output phase voltage and line to line voltage, at A=1.15 and B=0.19,m=0.8, N=40.

Where A, B is a constant, also is the amplitude of the modulating signal. When A, B=0, it is Sinusoidal PWM (SPWM), and when A0, B0 it is Third Harmonics Injection PWM (THIPWM) Now one is ready to implement the DC/AC inverter using PSPICE. The schematic input file as shown in Fig. 5, six power MOSFET are used as switch, which connected in anti-parallel with diode inside. The design parameters used for the DC/AC inverter circuit are as follows: V1=540VDC, Lx=25mH, Rx=2 and Ex=200V, which x=1, 2, and 3. The amplitude modulation ratio m is defined as

Fig. 7. Output phase voltage and line to line voltage

Fig. 8 shows three-phase current at A=1.15 and B=0.19, m=0.8 and f=100.

m=

Ar Ac

(5)

where Ar is amplitude of reference and Ac is amplitude of carrier waveform. The frequency modulation ratio f is defined as

f =

fc fr

(6)
Fig. 8. Three phase output current

where fc is carrier frequency and fr is modulation frequency.

From these waveforms, students can be encouraged to investigate other PWM control methods.

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III. PSB SIMULATION OF A VECTOR CONTROL SYSTEM A. Modeling the Vector Control System In this section, the PSB is introduced to analyze of the vector control of an induction motors drive system. The block diagram of the vector control of an induction motors drive system is shown in Fig.8. The three-phase IGBT inverter is modeled by a Universal Bridge block in which the Power Electronic devices and Port configuration options are selected as IGBT/Diode and ABC as output terminals respectively. The induction motor with a squirrel-cage rotor is as SI unit model. The electrical and mechanical parameters of the motor and load are chosen to be L-L voltage=380V, rated frequency =50Hz, and other parameters: RS=0.087 , LlS=0.8mH, rotor resistance Rr =0.228, Llr=0.8mH, LM=34.7mH, inertia J=1.66kgm2 and np=2. The remains of the system, which includes the hysteresis current regulator, the dq-abc converter, and PI speed controller, is made up of standard SIMULINK model. A flux control loop has been added for precision control of flux. The torque component of current Iq * is generated from the speed control loop. Fig. 9 can be extended to flux weakening mode by programming the flux command as a function of speed so that the inverter remains in PWM mode. The motor currents and speed signals utilized by control system are provided by the measurement output of the Asynchronous machine block.

s =

2 2

LM

iq1

(8)

where 2=LR/ Rr. The rotor flux component and slip speed s signals are attained. Using formula 9, we can get flux phase signal . Fig. 10 shows a flux estimation model.

= ( m + s )dt

(9)

Fig. 10. Current model flux estimation

C. Simulation Results When vector control of induction motor SIMULINK model described above has been implemented, the simulation can start. State-space formulation allows the use of a wide variety of fixed step and variable step algorithms available time step algorithms are usually faster because the number of steps is less than with a fixed time step method. However, for large systems containing a large number of states and /or power switches, it is advantageous to discretize the electrical system and to use a fixed time step algorithm. The simulation results are displayed on SIMULINK scopes while the simulation is running. The students can access a variety of MATLAB functions and toolboxes for processing and plotting of waveforms stored in the MATLAB workspace. In this simulation test, A fixed time step TS=1us was used, the load torque was a constant 40Nm, speed reference of 150rad/s was set. The current regulator hysterisis band is defined to be 10A. The drive operation and waveforms agree well with theoretical predictions. The SIMULINK model is useful for different studies on the drive operation. The response of the motor torque amplitude, stator three-phase current, motor speed, and rotor flux linkage are shown in Fig. 11. In particular, the transient waveform of output line voltage and current can be seen in Fig. 12. IV. CONCLUSION The implementation for designing and analyzing power circuit and drive system used PSPICE of student version and MATLAB/SIMULINK of version 6.5 was described. The method was presented in power electronics and electric drive system class, it helps students understand theoretical concepts, and on the other hand, students were asked to implement a different circuit and system as their class project. The experiment received a positive response.

Fig.9. Induction motor vector control block diagram with speed and flux closed-loop control

B. Rotor Flux Vector Estimation In the direct vector control method, it is necessary to estimation the rotor flux component . The different combination of signals, which can be measured, such as current, voltage, and speed, is provided to acquire different flux estimation models. In the low-speed region, the rotor flux component can be synthesized more easily with help and three-phase stator current. Three-phase stator currents are converted via abc-dq converter, and the torque component of current iq1 and the flux component of current id1 are acquired. Using vector formula 7-8, as follow:

2 =

Lm id 1 2P +1

(7)

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torque(Nm)

400 200 0 500 Tl=40Nm voltage(V)

600 400 200 0 -200 -400 -600 2 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.1

0.5

current(A)

1.5 ? ? (s)

2.5

0 -500

0.5

speed(r/min)

1.5 ? ? (s)

2.5

3 50

1000 0 1 0.5 0 0 0.5 1 1.5 time(s) 2 2.5 3 current(A)

0.5

flux(wb)

1.5 ? ? (s)

2.5

-50

2.01

2.02

2.03

2.04

2.05 2.06 time(s)

2.07

2.08

2.09

2.1

Fig. 11. Simulation of the starting of the induction motor drive

Fig. 12. Induction motor voltage and current waveform and control of electronic power converters using MATLAB /SIMULINK, IEEE Transactions on Education, vol. 45, NO.3, pp.253-261, August 2002. Muhamm and. H. Rashid, Power Electronics Hand-book, China Machine Press, 2004. Bimal K. Bose, Modern Power Electronics and AC Drive, China Machine Press, 2004. A. E. Fitzgerald, Charles Kingsley and Stephen D. Umans, Electric Machinery, Tsinghua University Press, 2003. Chen Jianye, The Application of Computer Simulation in Power Electronics, Tsinghua University Press,2003. Zhao Tao, Wang Qunjing, Jiang Weidong and Youyuan Ni, "The Simulation and Analysis of DC Motor Driver System for Hybrid Electric Vehicle," The 5th World Congress on Intelligent Control and Automation, HangZhou, ZheJIang Province, China, June 15-19, 2004, pp.3256-3259.

The technique presented in this paper can be extended to undergraduate design projects in power electronics and electric drives system and other courses. In order to minimize convergence problems and reduce the run times, MATLAB/SIMULINK and PSPICE should to be used to implement different types of experiments. REFERENCES
[1] Ibrahim Chamas, Mahmoud A. and EI Nokali, Automated PSPICE Simulation as Effective Design Tool in Teaching Power Electronics," IEEE Transactions on Education, vol.47, NO. 3, pp.415-421, August 2004. [2] Pires. V. F, Silva, J.F.A, Teaching nonlinear modeling, simulation,

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