Design and Control of High-Frequency Buck Converter Fed Six-Step Drive for Air-Core PMSM

Air-core permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs) machines are becoming known for their higher efficiency, lighter weight designs, and superior performance compared to widely utilized induction motors (IMs). They hold great potential for diverse industrial applications. However, effectively harnessing this potential requires overcoming drive hardware and control challenges. This research introduces a silicon carbide (SiC)-based two-phase interleaved buck-converter-fed quasi-current source inverter (quasi-CSI) drive tailored for driving low-inductance air-core PMSMs which is ideal for heavy-duty fan and pump applications. Operating in the discontinuous current mode (DCM) with an effective switching frequency of 1 MHz, this drive is designed to address efficiency and the very low-cost market constraints while simultaneously reducing control complexity an issue associated with its high switching frequency. The article also analyzes two critical control challenges of mitigating high current spikes due to air-core machines’ low inductance and finding solutions to overcome microcontroller resource limitations when executing time-critical functions within interrupt subroutines (ISRs). The culmination of this work is a 300 V dc-bus and five-horsepower electric drive prototype with closed-loop speed control. Experimental results illustrate a 2% enhancement in overall efficiency compared to conventional induction machine (IM) drives in similar applications (e.g., fan and pump) and ratings, alongside a significant 50% reduction in drive volume.