Saliency Extraction and Torque Sharing Estimation of Dual Motor Drive using Special Current Sensor Configuration

Dual motor drives refer to the control of two motors connected in parallel and fed by a single inverter. This type of drives is usual in some industry fields such as railway applications or conveyor drives. The control performance as well as the feasibility for saliency extraction are highly impacted by the arrangement and amount of current sensors equipped in the drive. Commonly, four current sensors in total are attached to two phases of each motor, thus permitting torque sharing calculation and individual spatial saliency extraction. In this work, two different current sensor configurations are applied to an experimental test stand consisting of two induction motors connected in parallel and fed by a single inverter. The two current sensor configurations are investigated and discussed for encoderless saliency extraction, control performance and torque sharing estimation capability.