Influence of PWM Torque Control Frequency in DC Motors by Means of an Optimum Design Method

The phenomenon of non-linearity is the main problem of a DC motor and optimum performance cannot be obtained by the calculation of the controller’s parameters using conventional methods. However, a DC motor is considered an extremely common device by the low-cost and effective dynamic response in various applications. Thus, it has been a subject for research studies to take advantage of its maximum performance. This manuscript proposes an experimental methodology that consists of the following: The DC motor’s characterization method for finding the ideal frequency. The design of the Firmware-based Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) generating module and the P, PD, PID controller’s implementation in an own FPGA-based programmable microprocessor to obtain almost the same performance as a servo-amplifier commercial of direct-drive. The PWM is a technique widely used to regulate the speed of rotation of a DC motor, in this case, the duty cycle of the PWM is used to provide the torque necessary to the mechanics of the system in order to look for a linear relationship but using the right frequency of the characterized DC motor. Finally, based on a built prototype of a micro-positioning system using the characterized motors, and the mathematical model, in both cases the three controllers were applied in order to establish the comparison between the responses, seeking to observe if the experimental results show a great difference with respect to the simulation results. The main aim of this study is to show that the proposed methodology works. However, since there was no significant difference in both results, motors used in the closed-loop control present approximately the same linear response as that of the motor model used in the simulation.