Development of PM brushless DC motor drive system for underwater applications

In this paper, the BLDC motor control using rotor position sensing scheme is discussed. The implemented motor drive is controlled by an 8-bit microcontroller PIC18F4431 for driving the power inverter bridge. The use of microcontroller in the drive system will provide flexible and on-line source code modifications in accordance with the motor and circuit requirements. Hardware implementations which have been built consist of a control board, power inverter board and 6-slot/4-pole permanent magnet brushless motor for underwater applications. The information about rotor positions of BLDC motor is obtained using the built-in Hall Effect sensors mounted inside stator iron. Hence, a proper driving sequence for the BLDC motor has been successfully generated as validated by the experiment.