An Efficient and Robust I-f Control of Sensorless IPMSM With Large Startup Torque Based on Current Vector Angle Controller

Interior permanent magnet synchronous motor (IPMSM) with back electromotive-force (EMF) based sensorless field-oriented control (FOC) is widely used in medium-high speed applications. Unfortunately, the back EMF is too small to be estimated accurately during low speed operation. Hence, the current-frequency (<italic>I–f</italic>) control with controllable current vector is used for startup. However, the conventional <italic>I–f</italic> control is hard to realize the tradeoff between startup speed and load capacity, suffering high-acceleration and high-load startup failure. In this article, a current vector angle controller for sensorless IPMSM startup is proposed to adjust speed-up-stage current acceleration and constant-speed-stage current amplitude with load automatically. The proposed angle controller guarantees the current vector angle close to the maximum torque per ampere angle, which contributes to large startup torque, high operating efficiency and smooth transition from <italic>I–f</italic> startup to sensorless FOC. Furthermore, the robustness against parameters variation of angle controller is evaluated quantitatively. These theoretical advantages are verified in experiments with a 380 V, 1.5 kW IPMSM. In particular, the experimental results demonstrate that the proposed <italic>I–f</italic> control realizes full-load startup even with <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\rm{ \pm }}$</tex-math></inline-formula>50% flux linkage and <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">${\rm{ \pm }}$</tex-math></inline-formula>30% inductance variation. Furthermore, the startup acceleration auto-adjusts with load to reconcile startup speed and load capacity.