Proceedings of 2016 IEEE
International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation
August 7 - 10, Harbin, China
The Fuzzy-PID Control of Brushless DC Motor
Jianli Jing,Yanchun Wang and Yinghui Huang
Departement of Electronic and Electrical Engineering
Bengbu College
Bengbu, China
jingjl98@163.com
Abstract - As the character of brushless DC motor (BLDCM)
is nonlinear, the classical control method can not obtain satisfied
performance,so the fuzzy control is used to control BLDCM,but
the conventional fuzzy controller has no integral part ,which
performance is similar to Proportional Derivative(PD)
controller,so its static control precision cannot be guaranteed. In
this paper, a fuzzy Proportional Integral and Derivative(PID)
controller that can ensure static precision is proposed to improve
the performance of conventional fuzzy controller and is applied to
the speed control of brushless DC motor. The proposed fuzzy-PID
method employs fuzzy control when the error is big, employs the
PID control when the error is small, so it has both the rapid
response of ordinary fuzzy controller and the steady precision of
PID controller.The experiment results show the dynamic and
static performance of the proposed fuzzy-PID controller are all
excellent,the overshoot is zero,the speed respond is fast and the
static precision is high,better than the conventional PID
controller and the conventional fuzzy controller in speed control.

Index Terms - brushless DC motor;PID control; fuzzy PID
control;fuzzy control
 so it has the advantages of the two methods.The experiment
I. INTRODUCTION
The conventional DC motor accomplishes the
commutation with the help of mechanical commutators and
brushes. The coil of the brushless DC motor locates in the
stator, and the permanent magnet locates in the rotor. The
brushless DC motor commutates by means of the rotor
position detected by position sensor, so the brushless DC
motor does not need commutators and brushes. The brushless
DC motor has many merits,such as high efficiency and low
maintenance, high power density and wide speed range, so it is
used increasingly in industrial applications and its market is
rapidly growing[1].
The PID controller is comprised of proportional (P),
integral (I) and derivative (D) controller,is most widely
applied in industry control, it can be easily implemented and
its control result is effective.
The conventional PID speed controller is sensitive to
system parameters,which can obtain excellent performance
only when the controller parameter is matched well with the
system.However, the brushless DC motor is a nonlinear,
strongly coupled system, which need to PID controller
parameters is different when the state changes.So, it is difficult
to obtain a excellent dynamic and static performance when
using the conventional PID controller, which dynamic
978-1-5090-2396-7/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE


performance is normally weak ,such as slow response, large
overshoot even oscillation[2].
The drawback of conventional PID control has resulted
in the increased demand for intelligent control like fuzzy
control[3-4], neural network control[5] and adaptive control[6].
Among them, the fuzzy control is attractive since it can deal
with the system’s nonlinearities effectively and easily.The
simplicity compared to other intelligent control, insensitivity
to motor parameter variations and adaptability to various
changes make it suitable for speed control of brushless DC
motor. The fuzzy control exhibites outstanding capability of
dealing with the dynamic response,but it’s capability is poor in
the static performance,because it has no integral part ,its
ability is similar to Proportional Derivative(PD)controller
essentially.
To improve the ability of fuzzy control,this paper
proposes a compound control,which combines the fuzzy
control with the PID control,named as fuzzy-PID control. The
proposed fuzzy-PID method employs fuzzy control when the
error is big, employs the PID control when the error is small,
results show the dynamic and static performance of the
proposed fuzzy-PID controller are all excellent,the overshoot
is zero,the speed respond is fast and the static precision is
high,better than the conventional PID controller and the
conventional fuzzy controller in speed control[7-8].
II. Modeling of Brushless DC Motor
The controlled brushless DC motor consists of a three
phase winding stator and a permanent magnet rotorˈit is
operated in two phase conduction mode and its windings are
star connected.The position sensor provides correct
commutation information to the power devices in the inverter
bridge.
The BLDCM is modelled in the stationary reference
frame,the voltage equation is expressed as:

Vp=ep+R1ip+(LP-M)(dip/dt) (1)

where R1,Lp and M denote the resistance, inductance and
mutual inductance of stator phase winding respectively, vp,ip
and ep denote phase voltage, phase current and back
electromotive force(EMF) of each phase of stator respectively.
The back electromotive force is expressed as

ep=Ken (2)
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  which is smaller than 0.007e and can’t be eliminate by fuzzy
Where Ke,n represent EMF coefficient and rotor speed controller.
respectively. B. The Theory of Fuzzy-PID Controller
The electromagnetic torque is expressed as The traditional PID control method has no steady state

error,is easy to implement,so it has been widely applied in
 Te=∑epip/ω

Where Te,ω represent electromagnetic torque and rotor
angular velocity respectively.
The equation of motion is expressed as:

Te=TL+JƸ(dω/dt) (4)

where TL is load torque, J is the moment of inertia,and B
is the frictional coefficient.
The equation (1)-(4) constitute the mathematical model of
BLDCM.From mathematical model, it can be seen that the
characteristic of BLDCM is very similar to that of the
conventional DC motor.As conventional DC motor,the speed
of BLDCM can be controlled by the control of the stator
voltage,their relationship is linear roughly[9-10].
III. The Fuzzy-PID Control for BLDCM
A. The Static Performance Analysis of Fuzzy Controller
For implementing simply and fastly,fuzzy controller often
adopts a two dimensional structure which inputs are error e
and change in error ec.The function of fuzzy controller is
analogous to PD controller,the dynamic characteristic is
excellent,but static characteristic exists the error,this is
decided by the control method.Now we analyze the way in
which the fuzzy controller handles the input and output
variables,the actual input error is transformed into the dot of
fuzzy error domain by next equation.

nk=INT(keek+0.5) (5)
 and improve the system static performance.The threshold ε is
Where ke is the scaling factors ,the range of actual input
error is [-|emax|,|emax|], ek is the actual error at k moment,the
fuzzy error domain are {-n,-(n-1), …,0, …,n-1,n},INT is
rounding operation ,nk is integer in fuzzy error domain scaled
from ek.
From equation(5),when nk=0,it can be seen

many fields.But the speed control system of brushless DC
motor is a complex nonlinear system, the requirements to the
control parameters change along with the system state, so it is
difficult to meet the whole requirements for the traditional
PID control.The fuzzy controller holds a advantage in
dynamic performance than the traditional PID controller, but it
has the steady state error. The fuzzy-PID control combines the
fuzzy control with the the traditional PID control,it takes
advantages of excellent dynamic performance of fuzzy control
and the excellentstatic performance of traditional PID control,
so it can obtain a better control effect.
For explaining the theory of fuzzy-PID control,the
analysis of process response is needed.Fig. 1 is the step
response of general process, the figure comprises of is divided
into two rigons depending on the error,the error is big in
region 1, the error is small in region 2. According to the
principle of automatic control,the desired control value is
different in different stages of process.Because the fuzzy
control is efficient at controlling complex,nonlinear, time-
varying dynamic process and the PID control can eliminate
static error,so the proposed fuzzy-PID control employs fuzzy
control in region1and employs the PID control in region 2.
The fig.2 shows the theory of fuzzy-PID controller, there
is a switch which selects the control method depending on the
result of comparing error |e| to the setting threshold ε,when |e|
≥ε,the system is considered in the transient state, the fuzzy
controller is employed to improve the system dynamic
performance, otherwise, the system is considered in the steady
state, the PID controller is employed to reduce steady error
obtained by experiment[11-12].The performance of PID control
relies on the three control parameters,the function of
proportional parameter is to accelerate speed of response and
decrease the steady state error, the function of integral
parameter is to eliminate steady state error, the function of
derivative parameter is to improve the dynamic performance.

̮keek̮烋0.5 (6)


That is


ɴekɴ烋0.5/ke (7)


According to ke=n/e, so


ɴekɴ烋0.5e/n (8)


In discrete domain,n is 6 usually,so


ɴekɴ烋0.5e/6 (9) Fig. 1 The step response of general process

From above equation,it can be seen that there is error

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 1% 10 16 =2 36 30 3%



            
Fig. 2 The functional block diagram of fuzzy-PID controller for BLDCM Fig.3 The membership function and discourse domain of language variables

TABLE I
C. The Fuzzy Controller Design THE FUZZY CONTROL RULE TABLE
The fuzzy controller has obtained an outstanding success e
in a wide range of industrial applications, especially in ec
uncertain, nonlinear,or imprecise system, it is suitable for NB NM NS ZO PS PM PB
controlling the speed of the brushless DC motor.In the system, NB PB PB PM PM PS PS ZO
the fuzzy controller implements speed control of BLDCM
using voltage and current double closed loop,which provides a NM PB PM PM PS PS ZO NS
nonlinear mapping of the speed error to voltage the BLDCM NS PM PM PS PS ZO NS NS
desired. The fuzzy controller consists of fuzzification,
defuzzification, rule base and inference engine[13-14]. The ZO PM PS PS ZO NS NS NM
fuzzifier maps the true input value to a fuzzy set with a degree PS PS PS ZO NS NS NM NM
of definiteness, The fuzzy rule base states the performance
PM PS ZO NS NS NM NM NB
mechanism of the fuzzy system, the inference engine offers
essentialdecision-making logic to the system, defuzzifier PB ZO NS NS NM NM NB NB
converts an output fuzzy set to a single nonfuzzy output that is
the control signal of the system.
The error e and change in error ec are chosen as inputs of
the fuzzy controller, reference voltage of voltage loop is IV. EXPERIMENT RESULT
chosen as output. The input and output variables are scaled To verify the performance of the fuzzy-PID controller, the
into the integer discourse domain range of [-6,6].The discourse speed control system for BLDCM is constructed,which is
domain of input and output variables are all divided into seven based on the TMS320LF2407 type DSP,the program can be
membership functions: negative big (NB), negative medium conveniently modified.The brushless DC motor is fed by a
(NM), negative small (NS), zero (ZO), positive small (PS), three-phase full-bridge inverter, The fig.4 shows the full-
positive medium (PM) and positive big (PB). The membership bridge driving circuit of BLDCM. The parameters of BLDCM
functions of input and output are all isosceles triangles with are: PN=40W,UN=36V,IN=1.3A, nN=1500r/min. For
some overlap, the membership function and discourse domain comparison, the speed control system is operated in
of input and output language variables is shown in fig.3. conventional PID,fuzzy and fuzzy-PID control separately, the
The control rule tells the system how to do in experimental results are shown in Fig. 5-7 correspondingly.
representative circumstances, different from the ordinary From Fig. 5-7, it can be seen that the proposed controller is
automatic control method which requires a specific system precede to the conventional PID controller and the
model,which is the core part of a fuzzy controller design and conventional fuzzy controller in speed control, which reduces
is acquired from the character of the system dynamic response the rise time in comparison with the conventional PID
and expert’s experience. The chosen control rule is listed in controller, reduces settling time and speed fluctuation in
Table 1,which is made in consideration of Mamdani control comparison with the fuzzy controller.
rule and fast response. The fuzzy inference uses Mamdani
min–max inference method, the defuzzification uses the
weighted average method.

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 Fig.4 The full-bridge driving circuit of BLDCM
Fig.5 The speed step response in conventional PID control
Fig.6 The speed step response in fuzzy control
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Fig.7 The speed step response in fuzzy-PID control
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a fuzzy-PID controller is proposed which
combines the fuzzy controller with the conventional PID
controller and has the advantages of two methods. The
experiment results show the dynamic and static performance of
the proposed fuzzy-PID controller are all excellent,the
overshoot is zero,the speed respond is fast and the static
precision is high, precede to the conventional PID controller
and the conventional fuzzy controller in speed control.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The study was supported by major natural science
research project of Education Department of Anhui province
(KJ2016A452), natural science research project of
Education Department of Anhui province(KJ2012Z240), and
Bengbu College teaching research project (JYLY1212).
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