Current Sensorless MTPA Operation of Interior PMSM Drives for Vehicular Applications

This paper presents a direct voltage control method for interior permanent magnet synchronous motors (IPMSMs) with a single speed regulator. The method achieves maximum torque per ampere (MTPA) operation by controlling the magnitude and the angle of the voltage vector. For that, the mathematical model for the MTPA trajectory of the IPMSM is derived in the voltage plane. As such, no current sensor is needed, which makes the proposed strategy tolerant to current sensors failure unlike cascaded control loop based methodologies. Although no current sensor is used, the control strategy tracks MTPA trajectory by taking into account both voltage and current limits of the machine. The complete MTPA derivation in the voltage plane is presented in this paper; but, only the final solution is needed for real-time implementation. Henceforth, the simplicity of the control scheme combined with its current sensor dependence free characteristics make it a good candidate for real-time implementation in vehicular applications. The concept is developed and evaluated experimentally on a 10-HP IPMSM.