Decentralized Control of a Twelve-Phase PMSM

This paper presents a decentralized current control for a twelve-phase permanent magnet synchronous machine. The phases of the studied machine are interconnected as four winding sets of each 3 star-connected phases. The usage of doublelayer windings leads to a certain magnetic coupling between coils that share the same slot. For a faulttolerant drive it would be advantageous to control the winding sets using multiple decentralized controllers, in order to increase the redundancy and, therewith, the reliability of the drive. Hence, it is necessary to examine if multiple decentralized controllers can achieve a satisfying operating behavior. Therefore, a model of the machine is established, which considers geometric and saturation induced saliencies and allows to analyze the impact of the magnetic coupling. It is experimentally validated that proposed model is accurate in all relevant operating conditions. Further experimental tests are carried out to check, whether a decentralized control yields a good operating behavior.