Implementation and Design of Commutator and FOC for BLDC Motor

Abstract

This project aims to develop two different types of torque and position controlling methods for BLDC Motor in HDL for hardware implementation.

Brushless DC motors are commonly used in robotic systems and positioning applications. Low cost, low maintenance requirement, and durability make the BLDC motor an ideal choice for positioning applications. This report describes the implementation of the PID controller operation of a BLDC motor. Brushless motors mostly have the capability of developing high torque with good speed response. In this report, two different BLDC motor controllers are implemented in HDL and synthesized using the Libero SoC tool from Microsemi.

The first BLDC motor controller uses a 6-step commutation method with PID and PWM controller to drive the BLDC motor on reference RPM given from the user. System analysis is also performed to highlight the drawbacks of the system and to identify how they are mitigated with another type of BLDC motor controller. The second BLDC motor controller uses the Field Orientation Control (FOC) to control the BLDC motor. The design is implemented and tested in Verilog HDL and is also synthesized to be tested on FPGA. Both motor controllers are functionally verified by using an HDL code that mimics the motor behavior.

After the implementation and testing of both BLDC motor controllers, they are compared with each other in terms of cost, hardware complexity, accuracy, and various other parameters to identify different applications of both motor controllers.