A DSP-based Direct Torque Control of Five-phase Synchronous Reluctance Motor
Drive
Ruhe Shi Hamid A. Toliyat
Student Member, IEEE Senior Member, IEEE
Electrical Machines and Power Electronics Laboratory
Department of Electrical Engineering
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-3 128
Phone: (979) 862-3034
Fax: (979) 845-6259
E-mail: toliyat@ee.tamu.edu
Abstracf - This paper develops the Direct Torque Control
(DTC) technique for five-phase Synchronous Reluctance Motor
(SynRel) using a Digital Signal Processor (DSP). The
mathematical model of the proposed five-phase SynRel motor is
first given. The well-known winding function method is used to
derive winding inductances in order to develop the dynamic
equations of SynRel in natural frame of reference (a-b-e-be).
The fivephase transformation from the stationary (a-b-c-d-e)
reference system to a rotating (q-d-Q-Dn) reference system is
used to remove the angular dependency of the inductances to
obtain voltage equations for the fivephase SynRel motor in the
synchronous rotating reference frame. The torque in terms of
currents is then obtained using the magnetic co-energy method.
Direct torque control is thus developed for the five-phase SynRel
motor followed by simulation results in the MatlablSimulink
environment. The control block diagram of the proposed direct
torque control is also given in the paper. The switching pattern
is developed in order to maintain a sinusoidal flux waveform in
the air gap. A five-phase SynRel motor plus the five phase
current regulated IGBT based inverter were designed and
fabricated in the laboratory. The control method is
implemented on a TMS320C32 digital signal processor board.
I. INTRODUCTION
The synchronous reluctance motor has attracted many
researchers in the past several decades and is gaining more
interest as a viable altemative to ac induction motor drives [l-
51. A SynRel motor has a rugged simple structure, lower
manufacturing cost, possibility of high torque per unit
volume, and the absence of rotor windings resulting in simple
control schemes and decreased losses. In SynRel motor there
is no copper losses on the rotor like in induction motors.
Furthermore, it is more robust than the brushless motors with
a less expensive rotor structure. From torque ripple point of
view it is better than the doubly salient switched reluctance
motor. Its good compatibility with the power electronic
converter has also been recognized. Such attributes of this
machine appear an attractive candidate for numerous
industrial applications such as in robotic and spindle drives,
0 2001 IEEE
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low-cost medium performance drives, automotive and
traction drives.
It is also clearly shown that five-phase number drives
possess several advantages over conventional three-phase
drives. By employing five-phase drives one can reduce the
amplitude and increase the frequency of torque pulsations in
the drive. This ensures satisfactory performance of
mechanical system of the inverter-fed five-phase machines
even at low speed. It can also reduce the current per phase
without increasing the voltage per phase and lower the dc-
link current harmonics. Furthermore as five-phase machines
can work when one or two phases are at fault or even lost
they are very reliable [2][6][14].
By increasing the number of phases it is also possible to
increase the torque per rms ampere for the same volume
machine. The torque can be further increased by the
possibility of injecting the third harmonic into five-phase
machines without increasing the copper losses. This injection
of harmonics to increase torque is not possible in three-phase
machines [2]. The high order drive is likely to remain limited
to special application where high reliability is demanded such
as electrichybrid vehicles, aerospace applications, ship
propulsion and high power applications where a combination
of several solid state devices form one leg of the drive.
Fig. 1 shows a simple idealized representation model for
a two-pole five-phase SynRel motor with two-pole
concentrated windings. The five-phase hll-pitched windings
are 72' apart in space. In Figure 1, the minimum and
maximum air gap length are shown by g, and gb respectively.
It has been known that the torque density depends highly on
the saliency ratio gdg,. In our experimental set-up, this
saliency is achieved simply by removing certain teeth from a
conventional squirrel cage induction motor. Of course, the
stator lamination is punched with the proper number of slots
to house the five phase stator windings. In Figure 1 the q-
axis is lined up with the axis of phase a windings. The angle
between the rotor q-axis and the stator q-axis is shown by 0.
Notice that in this figure we considered the d-axis to lag the
q-axis by 90'.
 position because of the salient structure of the rotor. In order
to remove this dependency a 5 by 5 invertible transformation
TO) such as (4) is proposed to simplify the windings
inductance matrix [ 6 ] .

4a
cos e cos(e - -)
5
27?
cos(e - -1
5
cos(e+ -)47?
5
cos(e + -12a5
2n 4n 427 27?
sin 0 -
sin(@ -)
5
sin(@ -)
5
- sin(@+ -)
5
sin@ + -)
5
2 2a 2a
r(e)=- I COS- cos -
47? cos-47? cos-
5 5 5 5 5
4n 4a 2a
0 sin-2n sin- -sin- -sin-
5 5 5 5
1
- -1 -1 1
- 1
-
-fi 43 fi f i -

Fig. 1. Five phase SynRel motor with two-pole concentrated

windings.

II. SYSTEM EQUATIONS AND TRANSFORMATION

dAqs'
It is assumed that iron saturation can be neglected and + oil ds + -
.
V , = rsiqs
that only fundamental flux is taken into account. In general, dt
the equations in natural reference frame, which describe the
electrical behavior of this machine in matrix form are
expressed as follows.
Stator voltage equation: VQs = rsiQs +-
AQs
dt
Vs = RsIs +PA, (1)
Stator flux linkage equation: VDs = rsiDs +-
dADs
dt
=L (2)
1 s

where p =
d S

$& and V,, = rsi,, + -

dt
dLllS

The stator flux linkage equation in matrix form is given

by:
hqdQDs = LqdQDs iqdQDs
where
AqdQDs = h q s Ads jbs 9

iqdQDs = Lqs ids 'Qs iDs

- Eventually, after using the proposed transformation

Laa Lab Lad matrix T(8) the winding inductance matrix can be simplified
as
Lab Lbb Lbc Lbd Lbe
(3) L, 0 0 0 0
Lac Lbc Lcc
0 Lds 0 0 0
Lad Lbd Ldd Lde
La, Lbe Lee Lde Lee- LqdQDs (6)
0 LIS

By using the well-known winding function method [2, 0 0 0 LIS

61, it is easy to obtain this winding inductance matrix. It is where,

ais0 clear that this inductance matrix Lis varies with the rotor Lqs = &J + Lmq 9 Lds = + Lmd 9

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and, Les is the stator leakage and the parameters “a” and “b”
are the air gap coefficients, which are given by
1 1 1’ ’ 2 1 1
a=-(-+-) , b=-(--- ).
gu gb a ga gb
The inductance coefficient k is given by
k = -41brtN2with r being the stator inner radius,! the
7r2
effective stator stack length, and N the number of stator
windings in series.
111. ELECTROMAGNETIC TORQUE
For synchronous reluctance machines the shaft torque is
created by the alignment of the minimum reluctance path of
the rotor with the rotating stator magnetizing MMF, which is
produced only by the stator currents. Namely, when stator
windings are supplied with a set of five-phase balanced
currents a synchronously rotating air-gap flux is thus
produced. As the rotor rotates in synchronism with the stator
air-gap flux, electromagnetic torque is developed in order to
align the minimum magnetic reluctance path of the rotor with
the rotating air-gap flux. However, if the motor is loaded the
rotor begins to lag the rotating air-gap flux thus producing the
misalignment of the minimum reluctance path and the
rotating air-gap flux. Therefore, the developed torque will
increase in order to minimize the reluctance of the magnetic
path. In other words, the produced torque is proportional to
the angle between the stator flux linkage and rotor d-axis.
When the electromagnetic torque is equal and opposite to the
load toque on the rotor, the rotor will again rotate at
synchronous speed.
The mechanical equation of motion depends on the
characteristics of the load, which may differ widely from one
application to another. It is assumed, for simplicity, that the
load torque consists only of an inertial torque and a constant
load torque and that the friction load can be neglected. The
mechanical motion equation can be simply expressed as
where,
G: rotor angular speed,
J : rotor inertia,
Tdamp:damping torque,
T, : load torque and
T,, : electromegnetic torque produced by the
machine.
The electromagnetic torque can be found using the well-
known magnetic co-energy method as follows.
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It is easy to simplify this equation as
where,
Ads = Ldsids
and P is the number of poles.
Notice that if the difference of d-axis inductance and q-
axis inductance, namely (Lmc L,J is high, then the torque
density can be high. Also, the inductance torque is highly
dependent on the saliency ratio LdL,. In other words, in
order to increase the torque density and the effiency of
SynRel motor the saliency ratio L d L q s has to be high, and
also (LmRL,J needs to be high. However, there is a physical
limit to this ratio with such structure since the maximum
value of Lmd is the synchronous inductance and the minimum
value of Lmd is the stator leakage inductance. Other kind of
high-performance SynRel motors with high saliency ratio
have been developed. With axially laminated or radially
laminated rotor such SynRel machines can increase the
direct-axis reluctance path and decrease quadrature-axis
reluctance path so that the torque can be increased. The high
saliency ratio can also result in high power density, increased
torque, high power factor, and increased efficiency [9].
IV. DIRECT TORQUE CONTROL
Direct Torque Control (DTC) method [12, 131 can
produce instantaneous torque control yielding fast torque
response and very fast reversing operation. It is theoretically
based on the principle of field-oriented control of AC motors.
The main feature for this control method is that with DTC
there is no separate voltage and frequency-controlled PWM
modulator. In such a drive, flux linkage and electromagnetic
torque are controlled directly and independently by the
selection of optimum inverter switching vectors.
For five-phase SynRel motor drives as shown in Figure
2, there are totally thirty non-zero switching vectors and two
zero switching vectors. The non-zero vectors are shown in
Figure 3. The coordinates attached with these vectors
correspond to the switching states of the inverter switches
with, “1” representing a switch being on and “0” showing a
switch is off. All these thirty vectors are located as the
vertexes on three decagons. The only difference among the
three decagons is the length of the sides. The ratio of the
amplitudes is 1:1.618:1.6182, from the smallest one to the
largest one respectively.
However, it is found that only one switching is needed
from one vector to either of two nearby vectors for the largest
decagon, as shown in Fig. 4. These ten non-zero vectors are
chosen for the optimum switching modes in order to reduce
the switching loss from the five-phase inverter. These ten stator flux linkage (6)(7) and shaft speed from the speed
vectors divide the whole circle into ten sectors. The flux encoder, the two level hysteresis controller in which the
position decides the section number. In each sector, the next torque and flux references are compared with the actual
switching vector is chosen according to the combination of quantities calculated in the motor model, and optimal
flux error and torque error. For example, if the stator flux switching logic which translates the controller outputs into
linkage vector is in the first sector, Fig. 4, and the flux has to the appropriate commands to the power switching devices.
be increased (FI) and the electromagnetic torque has to be
positive (TP), the switching voltage vector to be selected is
V2. On the other hand, if the stator flux linkage has to be
increased (FI) and the electromagnetic torque needs to be
negative (TN), thus vector VI0 has to be selected. However,
if the stator flux linkage has to be decreased (FD) and the
electromagnetic torque needs to be positive (TP), vector V5 is
going to be selected. Similarly, if the stator flux linkage has
to be decreased (FD) and the electromagnetic torque has to be
negative (TN), vector V7 is going to be applied.

Fig. 2. Five-phase inverter system. Fig. 4. Ten switching vectors for direct torque control of
five-phase machines.
IfP.ql”.ry
I
V. SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
. . . .
IlW11)
Simulation is completed in Matlab/Simulink environment and
satisfactory results have been achieved. Figure 7 illustrates
the simulation results for run-up and speed reversal under
load and also a load removal. For every mode of operation
simulation results are provided. Figure 8 shows the stator flux
in all the conditions. It proves that the stator flux is rotating
at the predetermined path. The results show that DTC offers
very fast torque response and fast reversing operations.

r
o.a! - ;

0.6:
I - .

Fig. 3. Thirty non-zero switching vectors for five-phase

reluctance motor drive.

For all the sectors, Table 1 shows the optimum switching

voltage vector look-up table. In this table, d\(r = 1 stands for
FI, d\(r = -1 for FD, dT, = 1 for TI, and dT, = -1 for TD. The
DTC block diagram for Five-phase SynRel is shown in -1 4.8 4.6 4 . 4 4.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Phids(Wb)
Figure 5. This system consists of three basic functions. They
are: the SynRel Model which estimates the actual torque (1l), Fig. 7. Stator flux linkage.

I080
 The prototype motor, which was fabricated in the
laboratory, is a five-phase, 7.5 hp, 4-pole SynRel motor. It
has 40 stator slots, four poles with stator phases being 36"
mechanical apart in space. A five-phase current regulated
PWM inverter was also fabricated in the laboratory. The
basic power circuit topology is as shown in Figure 2. There
are totally 10 IGBTs plus corresponding gate drives needed
to fabricate this inverter. Shaft speed and stator current are
shown in Figure 9 when the machine is running at steady
state.
The control algorithm is now being- imDlemented
. on the
TMS320C32 digital signal processor board.
ig-Ju I -a8
10:56: 26
[Fl
rl
2.08 U
20 ms
1.5 W DCZ
t on Inverter-Fed Five-Phase Induction Motor Drive", IEEE Trans. on
i.5 U o c i
E] 20 RV ?& L 1 2 DC 8.1 V
4.5 V DCg
Fig. 8. Shaft speed and stator current.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, the d-q-D-Q-n model of a five-phase SynRel
motor is described. A five-phase transformation for
simplifying the machine equations in the a-b-c-d-e frame of
reference and transforming them into d-q-D-Q-n space is
used. The final equations in the newly defined d-q-D-Q-n
are presented. This simplified model is used to develop the
direct torque control of five-phase synchronous reluctance
motors. Simulation and partial experimental results are shown
to support the developed theoretical DTC model. The control
algorithm based on a TMS320C32 digital signal processor
Table 1. Optimum active voltage vector look-up table.
has been developed. Further work is under way in our
laboratory to close the loop and also take advantage of
addition of third harmonic flux to increase the machine
torque density.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This material is based in part upon work supported by
the Texas Advanced Research Program under Grant No.
000512-0079-1999, and Office of Naval Research under
Grant No. NOOOl4-98-1-0717.
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1991.
[2] H.A. Toliyat, L. Xu and T.A. Lipo, "A Five-Phase Reluctance Motor
with High Specific Torque", IEEE Trans. Industry Applications, Vol.
28, no. 3, pp.659-667, 1992.
[3] T. A. Lipo, "Synchronous Reluctance Machines: a viable altemative for
A.C. Drives?', Intemational Conference on the Evolution and Modem
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[4] A. Vagati, "The Synchronous Reluctance Solution: A New Altemative
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[6] H.A. Toliyat, R.Shi, and H. Xu, "A DSP-based Vector Control of Five-
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[7] K.N. Pavithran, R. Parimelalagan and M.R. Krishnamurthy, "Studies
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 DC Link
rlh

Flux
Amplilute
Obnewa

I I

Fig. 5 . Block diagram for direct torque control of five-phase SynRel Motor.

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1

mme (sec.)

Fig. 6 . From top to bottom: (a) Stator d-axis current in synchronously rotating reference frame (A), (b) Stator q-axis current
in synchronously rotating reference frame (A), (c ) Develpoed electromagnetic torque (Nm), (d) Load torque (Nm), (e) Motor
shaft actual speed (rpm), (f) Reference shaft speed (rpm), (g) Stator phase "a" current (A), (h) Stator phase voltage (V), (i)
Stator line-to-line voltag (V).

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