Closed loop control of axial flux permanent magnet BLDC motor for electric vehicles

Compact motor with high torque and wide speed range is the primary requirement for in-wheel electric vehicle application. Axial flux permanent magnet (AFPM) brushless direct current (BLDC) motors are an interesting solution for electric vehicles, because of their shape, flexibility, compactness, robustness, high efficiency, wide speed range and high torque. In this paper, a slotless AFPM BLDC motor is proposed. It has single side configuration with 24 stator poles and 36 permanent magnets (PM) on rotor disc. In most of the applications of AFPM BLDC motor, the speed control is very important. To achieve accurate speed control, closed loop control using microcontroller is proposed in this paper. Microcontroller is used to drive the motor by sensing rotor position using Hall sensors. The effective braking scheme is also proposed. To verify the performance of the proposed AFPM BLDC motor, simulation is carried out and results are presented. A prototype of AFPM BLDC motor is designed and fabricated in order to validate the performance of the motor.