CLOSED LOOP VOLTAGE CONTROL OF BRUSHLESS DC GENERATOR FOR VEHICLE APPLICATION

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Electrical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Shebin El-Kom, Menoufiya University, Egypt

Abstract

Brushless DC generator (BLDCG) is one of the most popular machines in variable speed
drives. That is due to its numerous advantages which are high efficiency and power density,
light weight, compact design and low maintenance. The most common applications, in which
BLDCG has been employed, are wind energy and transportation systems. These applications
have a main drawback that they are featured by large speed fluctuations accomplished by wind
turbines and internal consumption engines. This speed variation results in changes in the
BLDCG output voltage. This paper aims to maintain the generator output voltage at a constant
level with variation of both load and prime mover speed. This is achieved using a simple
closed loop control system including a variable reactor. This study belongs to vehicle
application, since it is recommended to replace the brushed claw pole synchronous generator
by BLDCG. Throughout the present work, the mathematical model, along with a
matlab/simulink program, have been developed and implemented for BLDCG system to
predict its operating characteristics. An experimental setup has been built and tested for the
sake of comparison. Good agreement between the theoretical and experimental results is
obtained. This confirms the validity of the theoretical analysis. Moreover, good performance of
the BLDCG with the proposed simple control method is obtainable.

Keywords