An Improved Model Predictive Direct Torque Control Strategy for Reducing Harmonic Currents and Torque Ripples of Five-Phase Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motors

Five-phase permanent magnet synchronous motors offer merits of high fault tolerant capability and high torque per rms ampere and, thus, are suitable for applications, such as aerospace and electric vehicles. However, the complex machine model causes difficulties in controller design. Besides, having 32 voltage vectors with various effects on currents and torque, the selection of the optimal switching state becomes a challenge to achieve a performance tradeoff. This paper proposes an improved model predictive direct torque control (MPDTC) strategy consisting of a quadratic evaluation method (QEM) and a harmonic voltage elimination method (HVEM). In QEM, the preliminary vector is first chosen from the vectors of the outer decagon according to a cost function for torque and flux regulation. This preliminary vector, composed of three sets of different amplitudes, is further synthesized according to the error between the actual torque/flux and the references. In this way, the optimal voltage vector can be obtained without significantly increasing the computational burden. In HVEM, by subtracting the harmonics voltage component from the vector determined previously in QEM, the final voltage vector is obtained for mitigating stator harmonic currents. The proposed control strategy is compared with the conventional MPDTC approach. The results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed methods with good steady-state performance while maintaining quick dynamic responses.