Voltage Controller for Flux Weakening Operation

of Interior Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor

in Automotive Traction Applications
Tobias Huber, Wilhelm Peters, Member, IEEE, Joachim Böcker, Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract—In electric automotive traction drives an optimal has to be maintained. This can either be done in an open-
utilization of the DC-bus voltage in the wide flux weakening loop manner, leading to a suboptimal DC-bus utilization for
range is crucial. At the same time a voltage margin is required most operating points. Alternatively, a voltage controller can
to ensure the stability of the inner current control loop. An
adequate trade-off between these conflicting objectives is ob- be employed. In this case, a much better trade-off between the
tained by employing a superimposed voltage controller that is conflicting objectives voltage margin and DC-bus utilization
activated during flux weakening operation. In this paper, the can be achieved.
design of such a voltage controller is presented. A simplified In several publications, the necessity to control the voltage
voltage controller plant model is identified from step response demand of different motors in flux weakening operation is
measurements. Due to variations of the plant parameters, the
voltage controller is designed as a gain-scheduling controller addressed and suitable control schemes are proposed. In [1]
with sufficient robustness towards plant model inaccuracies. and in [2], additional voltage controllers are employed to
The performance of the voltage controller is demonstrated by adjust the voltage demand of an induction motor. In [1],
test-bench measurements based on an electric traction motor the voltage controller represents the outer control loop of a
typically employed in sub-compact electric vehicles. cascaded structure with flux and current controllers serving as
Index Terms—Interior permanent magnet synchronous motors inner control loops. In [2], the voltage controller is arranged
(IPMSM), traction motors, electric vehicles, voltage control, flux in parallel to the flux controller and the switching between
weakening operation constant flux and constant voltage operation is carried out
implicitly by minimum selections. In [3], the principle of
I. I NTRODUCTION lookup-table-based voltage control is presented, which is also
utilized in [4], [5] as well as in this contribution. However,
In today’s electric and hybrid electric vehicles interior per- in [4], [5], the design of the voltage controller based on a
manent magnet synchronous motors (IPMSM) are commonly thorough plant analysis is not described. Moreover, the critical
employed as traction drives. For that specific application, transition from constant torque to flux weakening range is
the motors are designed to obtain high power and torque completely neglected. Both aspects are discussed in this paper.
densities causing a considerably different behavior compared
to industrial drives. The main characteristics are a wide
II. C ONTROL S CHEME OVERVIEW AND VOLTAGE
speed range, a wide constant-power operation range and high
C ONTROLLER S PECIFICATION
magnetic saturation. Since the available energy is limited due
to the battery capacity, the efficiency and the weight of the uDC
drive train components are crucial. Thus, a suitable control Control Scheme
uDC
scheme is required to ensure a high efficiency as well as a ua sa
i∗d Field-Oriented
high utilization of the installed components. T∗ Operating Point ub sb
i∗q Current PWM
Typically, a field-oriented control is utilized, which is Selection uc sc
Controller
composed of an inner current control loop and a superimposed
open-loop torque control. In the flux weakening range, a ψmax,Δ ia
ib
suitable voltage margin is required to ensure the stability of ic
the current control loop on the one hand and to provide a good a
Voltage
utilization of the DC-bus voltage on the other hand. Increasing Controller uDC
IPMSM
the DC-bus voltage utilization allows torque demands to be
 Position Signal
generated at higher voltage and lower current levels. That ωel Processing
way, higher maximum torque outputs can be achieved at given
speeds without violating the current limit. At the same time, T ,n
the drive efficiency can be increased, since for most motors the Fig. 1. Control scheme overview
current magnitude has a higher impact on the total losses than
the voltage magnitude. Due to modelling inaccuracies in the In Fig. 1, a suitable control scheme is presented [6]. The
open-loop torque control, a sufficient voltage safety margin field-oriented current control consists of a decoupling measure
and two independent current controllers for the current com-
T. Huber, W. Peters and J. Böcker are with the Department of Power
Electronics and Electrical Drives, Paderborn University, 33098 Paderborn, ponents id and iq [6], [7]. To fully utilize the DC-bus voltage
Germany, e-mail: {huber, peters, boecker}@lea.uni-paderborn.de for transient operation point changes, the current controller

l-))) 
output voltages are limited to the hexagon in Fig. 2 resulting
from the possible switching states of a B6 bridge inverter
[6]. In an operation point selection scheme, suitable current
reference values i∗d and i∗q are chosen to set the requested
torque T ∗ with high efficiency considering the maximal
flux magnitude ψmax,Δ . The reference values are chosen
according to the MTPC (Maximum Torque per Current) or
the ME (Maximum Efficiency) operating strategy depending
on the motors loss characteristics [8], [9]. The maximum flux
ψmax,Δ results from the actual speed ωel and the DC-bus
voltage uDC and is corrected by the voltage controller. That
way, a high utilization of the DC-bus voltage can be realized
while at the same time maintaining a sufficient voltage margin
to ensure the proper operation of the current controllers. The
voltage controller is activated once the motor enters the flux
weakening range. Since the voltage controller is realized in a
cascaded control structure with the current controller as inner
control loop, its dynamics should be slower than the dynamics
of the current controller [10]. That way, the voltage demand of
the motor is limited to the inner circle of the hexagon in Fig. 2
during steady state operation. During transient operation, on
the other hand, the current controllers can utilize the entire
hexagon inFig. 2 (including edges) without being constrained
by the voltage controller.
uq uβ
√1 uDC = umax
3
ud
u |u|
2
 3 uDC
uα
a= |u|
=1
umax
Fig. 2. Utilizable Voltage
III. P LANT PARAMETER I DENTIFICATION
For the voltage controller design, a plant model is required.
The voltage control loop scheme is shown in Fig. 3. The
deviation of the actual modulation rate a from its reference
value a∗ is the input of the voltage controller. The actuating
variable is the flux correction value ψΔ , which is added to
the feed-forward flux ψmax = uωmax el
with umax = u√DC 3
determining the flux limit ψmax,Δ in the operation point
selection. Appropriate operation points are chosen according
to the requested torque T ∗ and the flux ψmax,Δ and are
applied to the current controller. The voltage at the current
controller output is used to calculate the modulation rate a,
which is the controlled variable. The resulting plant transfer
function (1)
a(s) Δa(s)
Gp (s) = = (1)
ψmax,Δ Δψmax (s)
contains several nonlinearities due to the nonlinear torque
equation, the nonlinear current dynamics caused by magnetic
saturation, several limitations in the operation point selection

and the voltage limit in the current control loop. Since the
voltage control loop dynamics can be much slower than the
current controller dynamics to correct the motor’s voltage
demand during steady state operation, a simplified plant
model is acceptable. Thus, it is convenient to approximate
the dominant plant dynamics by a first-order delay transfer
function with variable parameters according to (2).
Kp (θ1 )
Gp (s) = (2)
1 + sTp (θ2 )
Before the identification of the plant parameters Kp and Tp is
performed, their dominant dependencies of the parameter sets
θ1 und θ2 have to be considered. Afterwards, the parameter
identification procedure can be set up.
The proportional gain of a first-order delay corresponds to
the output-input-ratio in steady state condition. This ratio can
directly be calculated from the voltage equation of an IPMSM
in steady state operation. Due to the low resistive stator
winding values of the investigated motor, ohmic voltage drops
can be neglected in this context. Thus,
 the motor’s voltage
demand |u| and the flux linkage ψ  interrelate according to
(3) with the output of the voltage controller in flux weakening
operation as can be seen in Fig. 3.
 
ψ  = |u| = ψmax,Δ = ψmax + ψΔ (3)
|ωel |
Solving (3) for ψΔ (4) results.
|u| − umax Δu
ψΔ = − ψmax = = (4)
|ωel | |ωel | |ωel |
|u|
With the definition of the modulation rate a = umax the
modulation rate variation Δa with respect to a variation
of the flux correction value Δψ can be calculated. Thus,
the plant gain Kp depends on the exogenous parameters
θ1 = [ωel , uDC ]T and can be calculated according to (5).
√
Δa |ωel | |ωel | 3
Kp = lim = = (5)
t→inf ψΔ umax uDC
Due to nonlinearities and modelling inaccuracies of the lookup
tables in the operation point selection the plant gain Kp can
deviate from the analytically calculated value, thus (5) will be
validated by experiments within the identification of the plant
parameters.
Since there are no delays in the operation point selection,
the plant time constant directly results from the current
controller closed-loop dynamics. The current controller gains
are not adapted to the variation of the current dynamics caused
by magnetic saturation. In consequence, the dominant time
constant of the current control loop Tp varies depending on
the operation point (id , iq ). Additional nonlinearities are in-
troduced by the actuating variable limitations in Fig. 3, which
have an impact on the dominant plant time constant as well.
In this context, especially the voltage limitation at the current
controller outputs has to be considered. The impact of that
limitation depends on the current controller dynamics and the
actual modulation rate a, since the available voltage margin
for current controller operation varies with the modulation
rate. Thus it is assumed, that the dominant plant time constant
Tp depends on the parameter set θ2 = [a, id , iq ]T .
 ψmax T∗ Operating i∗dq ∗
Current udq idq
a∗ Voltage ψΔ ψmax,Δ Point IPMSM
Controller
Controller Selection
a
abs umax = u√
DC
3

Fig. 3. Voltage Control Loop Scheme

The parameters of the transfer function (2) were identified 45

from open-loop input-output measurements of the operation
40
point selection and the current control loop. Therefore, the
flux correction value is varied stepwise and the step response 35

Vs
of the modulation rate Δa is measured at the test bench. The

1
30

Kp in
transfer function parameters are identified in different oper-
25
ation points and have only local validity in the environment
of the respective operation point. From the composition of 20

the parameter sets θ1 and θ2 , it is reasonable to understand 15

operation points as 5-tuples (ωel , uDC , a, id , iq ). To reduce the
resulting number of experiments the following assumptions
are made: The modulation rate reference is set to a∗ = 0.953,
the influence of the DC-bus voltage on Kp is sufficiently
described by (5) and does not need to be separately identified
by experiments, a rough estimate of the plant time constant
and a controller that is robust to parameter variations is
sufficient to meet the moderate dynamics requirements of the
voltage controller. Furthermore, the steady state current values
(id , iq ) are determined as a function of ωel , uDC , a and the
torque reference T ∗ by the lookup tables in the operation point
selection. Thus, it is sufficient to identify the plant parameters
at different combinations of torque and speed values (T ∗ , ωel ).
1 1 1 1
K̂p = 30.3 K̂p = 28.8
Vs
0.8 T̂p = 1.3 ms 0.8 T̂p = 2.0 ms
a
10
4 6 8 10 12
n in 1000/min
Fig. 5. Fitted (red) and analytically calculated (green) plant gain Ki
over speed. The blue points represent the aproximated gains from different
identification experiments.
controller with small gain, then the integrator value was
frozen and a negative flux correction value step was applied.
Because a variation of the flux correction value ψΔ causes a
variation of the currents id and iq and thus a variation of the
dominant plant time constant Tp , different steps were applied
to sufficiently estimate the range of Tp . Flux correction
value steps of ψΔ = −5 mVs and ψΔ = −10 mVs were
used. Based on these experiments, the plant parameters were
Vs identified utilizing the prediction error method [11]. In Fig. 4,
measured and approximated modulation rate step responses

are shown for a couple of exemplary operation points. In

0.6 0.6
Fig. 5, the analytically calculated plant gains according to
0.4 0.4 (5) are compared with the actual gains from the identification
−10 0 10 20 30 −10 0 10 20 30 experiments. Since (5) approximates the actual gains quite
t in s t in s accurately, it can directly be used in the controller design.
(a) 10 Nm at 8000 min−1 (b) 65 Nm at 8000 min−1 It can also be seen from the identification experiments that
1 1 1 1
the dominant plant time constant varies within a range of
K̂p = 43, 1 K̂p = 43, 2
Vs Vs
0.8 . . . 3 ms in the relevant operation range.
0.8 T̂p = 0, 8 ms 0.8 T̂p = 2, 7 ms
a

0.6 0.6 IV. VOLTAGE C ONTROLLER D ESIGN

0.4 0.4
−10 0 10 20 30 −10 0 10 20 30
t in s t in s ψmax,Δ ∗
ψlim
(c) 10 Nm at 12000 min−1 (d) 50 Nm at 12000 min−1 min i∗d
Tmax (ψ, ω)
Fig. 4. Measured (blue) and approximated (red) modulation rate step
f1 (ψ, T, ω)

responses for flux correction steps of ψΔ = −10 mV

ω ω

Based on these assumptions, the following experiments i∗q

were performed for different operation points in the flux weak- ∗
T∗ ψopt (T ∗ , ω) Tlim
ening range: The DC-bus voltage was set to a nominal value in
the center of the voltage variation interval. A modulation rate
of a = 0.953 was adjusted by an empirically designed integral Fig. 6. Operation Point Selection Scheme


 An important aspect of the voltage controller design is the disturbance transfer function (7) results.
realization of the controller output limitation along with a 1
Gp (s) Kp K s
suitable anti-reset windup scheme. From the operation point Gz (s) = = (7)
selection scheme in Fig. 6, it can be seen, that an optimal flux 1 + Gi (s)Gp (s) 1 T
1 + K s + Kp s2
value ψopt is estimated according to the utilized operation The disturbance transfer function has a second-order band-
strategy and compared to the flux limit ψmax,Δ , which is pass filter characteristic with the generalized transfer function
manipulated by the voltage controller. Then, the minimum of (8) including the damping factor d and the characteristic
those flux values is used to select an appropriate operation angular frequency ω0 .
point. It becomes obvious, that the voltage controller is only
active in the flux weakening range, in the constant torque KBP ω2d0 s
GBP (s) = 2d 1 2
(8)
range the voltage control loop is not closed and the modulation 1+ ω0 s + ω02
s
rate a is permanently smaller than the reference value a∗ .
The controller output is limited through positive and negative By equating the coefficients in (7) and (8) the damping factor
flux correction value ψΔ +
and ψΔ−
. Those limits are chosen by and the characteristic angular frequency of the voltage control
means of a worst-case estimation of the expected modelling loop can be calculated according to (9).

inaccuracies in the operation point selection. The positive limit 1
d = √1
T
+ T0 = = Kp (9)
ψΔ ensures, that the drive is not operated in flux weakening 2 KTp ω0
mode at modulation rates a smaller than the reference value Since the voltage controller is employed in a cascaded
−
a∗ , the negative limit ψΔ ensures, that the voltage demand control structure, its dynamics should be slower than the
of the motor can be sufficiently reduced to maintain the inner current control dynamics to avoid potential oscillation
desired voltage margin during flux weakening operation. In excitations between both controllers. In addition, the voltage
the following, the controller design and the realization of the controller is supposed to adjust the motor’s voltage demand
anti-reset windup scheme will be de described. in steady state operation. However, after a transient operating
point variation the voltage controller has to prevent the current
ψe controller to be operated in saturation for too long. Since the
∗
decoupling of the current components is inoperable during
a ψΔ a
Gi (s) Gp (s) current controller output limitation, the currents can deviate
from their reference values and even exceed the allowed
current limit of the motor. A good controller performance is
gained with aperiodic damping d ≤ 1. With the poles of the
Fig. 7. Simplified voltage control loop
disturbance transfer function (10)
1 1   
An integral controller is chosen as voltage controller mainly p1,2 = − =− d ± d2 − 1 (10)
for two reasons: First, as shown in Fig. 3, the modulation T1,2 T0
rate a is directly calculated from the actuating variable of the dominant time constant of the voltage control loop results
the current control loop u∗dq . A proportional controller gain to (11) considering (9).
leads to a noisy flux correction values ψΔ , while a smooth 1 2d
variation is obtained by employing an integral controller. Tv = = √ Tp (11)
min (|Re{p1,2 }|) d − d2 − 1
Second, the voltage controller should only adjust the motor’s  
voltage demand during steady state operation while allowing α

the current controller to utilize the entire voltage region during
transients (hexagon in Fig. 2). Since the voltage controller
has to follow the modulation rate to a constant reference
value of a∗ = 0, 953, not the reference response but the
disturbance rejection of the modulation controller is crucial. A
simplified scheme of the lookup-table-based voltage control
loop is shown in Fig. 7 whereas modelling inaccuracies in
the operation point selection are represented by an additive
flux error ψe at the integral controller output. In contrast to
the plant time constant, the plant gain Kp (|ω| , uDC ) can be
compensated in terms of maintaining constant voltage loop
dynamics by adjusting the integral controller gain according
to the controller transfer function (6).
ψΔ (s) Ki K That way, it is ensured, that the relative dynamics between
Gi (s) = = with Ki = (6)
Δa(s) s Kp (ωel , uDC )
While the gain Kp in (6) is scheduled according to (5),
the constant gain K has yet to be determined. With (6) the
The proportionality factor α in (11) describes the relative
dynamics between the inner current and outer voltage control
loop. From (11), the damping factor d can be expressed as a
function of the relative dynamics α according to (12).
α
d= √ (12)
2 α+1
If suitable values for d and α are found, the controller gain
K can be calculated from (13).
1 α−1 1 1
K= = (13)
Tp α 2 Tp 4d2
Since the dominant plant time constant varies for different
operation points in the range 0.8 . . . 3 ms, the controller gain
K should be calculated based on the maximal occurring value.
the inner and outer control loop do not exceed a predefined
minimal value. Since the controller gain is calculated based on
nominal values for the time constant and the dynamic range
(e.g. α = 5) in (13), the actual value of alpha can be calculated


by rearranging (13), while assuming Tp to be the actual time
200
constant.
2
α=  (14)
1 − 1 − 4KTp 0

id , iq in A
In addition to the controller design, an anti-reset windup
(ARW) scheme and a limitation of the integral controller -200
action is required to avoid integrator windup when the motor
is operated in the constant torque region and in order to -400
ensure a smooth transition from constant torque region into
flux weakening operation. The realization of the anti-reset id iq i∗d , i∗q
-600
windup scheme is shown in Fig. 8. It is assumed, that the
+ − 0 1 2 3 4
integral action is inherently limited to ψΔ and ψΔ . For the 0

ψΔ in mVs
design of the ARW scheme mainly two scenarios have to -2
be considered. First, in the constant torque range the voltage -4
control loop is not closed due to the minimum selection in the -6
operation point selection scheme in Fig. 6. Thus, the actual -8
modulation rate a is constantly smaller than the reference a∗ 0 1 2 3 4
and due to the positive control error the integrator action 1
+
saturates in the positive limit ψΔ . In case of a transition 0.9

a
into the flux weakening region, the integrator action has
0.8
a a∗
to be reduced by a negative control error, which may take
some time. Meanwhile, the voltage output of the current 0 1 2 3 4
controller remains saturated and thus the decoupling of the t in s
current components is not working properly. If this condition
Fig. 9. Alternating Torque Requests in Flux Weakening Range at a Speed
lasts too long, excessive motor currents may occur. To avoid of 8000 min−1
this circumstance, the integrator action is initialized with a
predefined value if the integral controller is at the positive
+
n in 1000/min

limit ψΔ and starts to decrease due to a negative control 12

error. In the second scenario, the motor is operated close to 10
the flux weakening range. The integral controller action is 8
+
assumed to be just before reaching the positive limit ψΔ when 6
a dynamic transition into flux weakening operation occurs. 4
In that case the ARW scheme just described above does 0 1 2 3 4
200
not go into effect, causing delayed voltage control actions,
id , iq in A

0
which may in turn be critical for keeping the currents within -200
their valid operating limits. To prevent such conditions, the id iq i∗d , i∗q
-400
integral controller action is also reset if the modulation rate
-600
a exceeds a predefined threshold ath . A low-pass filter is 0 1 2 3 4
utilized to ensure, that the integrator reset is not triggered 20
by transient voltage peaks. The low-pass filter time constant
ψΔ in mVs

10
and the threshold value ath are adjusted empirically on the 0
test bench. -10
0 1 2 3 4
|ωel | Kp
uDC 1
0.9
a

a∗ Integral ψΔ
Controller 0.8 a a∗
a 0.7
”‘Hold & Reset”’ 0 1 2 3 4
t in s
LP ARW +
≥ ath = ψΔ Fig. 10. Transition from Constant Torque Range to Flux Weakening Range
Logic

Fig. 8. Voltage Controller Scheme

V. E XPERIMENTAL R ESULTS
The control scheme presented in Fig. 1 has been im-
plemented on a dSpace rapid-prototyping system. A highly
utilized 60 kW electrical traction IPMSM for sub-compact
electrical vehicles was employed as test specimen. The speed
was set by a load motor. Exemplary experimental results
are shown in Fig. 9 and Fig. 10 for two different operation
scenarios. In Fig. 9, the operation of the voltage controller
at constant speed and alternating torque steps in the flux


weakening range is demonstrated. The motor is operated in
motoring (iq > 0) as well as generating (iq < 0) mode. The
modulation rate a is noisy due to the variation of the current
controller outputs udq caused for example by current harmon-
ics. However, its mean value is adjusted by the modulation
controller according to the reference value a∗ with stationary
accuracy. In Fig. 10, the motor is operated at constant torque,
but the speed is ramped up from 5000 min−1 to 12000 min−1 .
At first, the motor operates in the constant torque range, thus
the voltage controller is not active and the flux correction
ψΔ is equal to its positive limit of 20 mVs. Afterwards, the
modulation rate a exceeds the reference value a∗ and the
voltage controller is activated. Due to the proper design of
the anti-reset windup measure, the integral controller action is
reinitialized with a suitable flux value and the modulation rate
a is properly adjusted to its reference value a∗ . In both figures,
the current controller reference values idq are calculated by the
operation point selection and are set with stationary accuracy
by the current controllers.
VI. C ONCLUSION
The presented voltage controller enables a good utilization
of the DC-bus voltage while maintaining a suitable voltage
margin to ensure the stability of the current control loop.
The voltage control loop model is approximated by a first-
order delay and the model parameters are identified based
on measured step responses in different operation points.
An integral controller is employed as voltage controller and
designed to be robust to plant parameter variations. Since
the voltage controller is not active in the constant torque
range, an adequate anti-reset windup scheme is required to
keep the voltage controller output in a predefined range and
to enable fast controller actions in case dynamic transitions
between constant torque and flux weakening range take place.
Test bench results based on an automotive electric traction
motor for sub-compact electric vehicles demonstrate the good
performance of the presented control scheme.

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