Direct torque control for brushless doubly-fed machines

Work has illustrated the potential benefits of brushless doubly-fed machines in adjustable speed drive applications. While it has been shown that the drive is open-loop stable over a wide speed range, the resultant steady-state and dynamic performance characteristics are far from optimum. Thus, a closed-loop controller is desirable to achieve competitive drive performance. The controller proposed here is applicable for general purpose industrial drives in the medium to high power range. The nature of the doubly-fed machine, with two separate sources of excitation, only one of which is controllable, rules out field-oriented control strategies applied to conventional induction machines. However, the concept of direct torque control based on instantaneous error shows promise for this machine geometry. The present paper extends the concept of predictive torque control for induction machines to the doubly-fed machine. The controller calculates the value of converter voltage which leads to desired changes of flux and torque. Once the voltage is determined, conventional algorithms, such as space vector pulsewidth modulation (PWM), can be used to generate the inverter switching function.