Development of Sensorless Automobile Electric Water Pump Based on Rotor Flux Estimation

An automobile electric water pump is designed and developed with the permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) as the driving motor. The hardware system of the electric water pump is presented. The sensorless field oriented control (FOC) scheme based on rotor flux estimation is applied for the PMSM control. The phase-locked loop (PLL) method is used to improve the estimation accuracy. The startup strategy is investigated and studied to realize the robust transition from standstill to sensorless FOC operation. The physical system is built and the tests are carried out. The test results validated the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed scheme. It shows that the performances of the automobile electric water pump are appropriate with the high efficiency.