Auto-commissioning High Quality Motor Drive Systems

A truly user-friendly industrial drive should be able to identify the characteristics of the attached motor and operate it using field-oriented control with no user intervention. It should also produce the minimum possible noise both acoustically and electrically. The aim of this project is to approach this ideal by investigating the possibilities afforded by closed-loop output-voltage control. Additional benefits arising from using a three-level power stage topology may also be investigated. Closed-loop voltage control compensates for non-linearities in the power stage and allows for precise measurement and control of the attached motor. Three-level topologies allow much more freedom in PWM patterns than conventional two-level designs and thus offer the possibility of optimising the modulation strategy to minimise noise.