MPC-Based Coordination Control of Dual Direct-Drive Permanent Magnet Motors Used in Coal Mining Belt Conveyors

In the application of coal mining belt conveyors, dual-motor drives based on permanent magnet motors (PMM) are gaining increasing attention now. To achieve high-performance coordination control of the two motors, this paper proposes a finite control set model predictive speed control (FCS-MPSC) method to improve the dynamics and speed tracking performance of the motors. First, the features of the dual-motor drives used in conveyor belts are analyzed. On this basis, the requirements of the control strategies are illustrated. Second, a master-slave control strategy is developed after treating the PMMs at the tail end and head end as the master motor and slave motor, respectively. Third, the FCS-MPSC method is developed for both master and slave motors by using new predicting model. In this process, the issue that the speed property is not directly related to the manipulated variables are tackled. Moreover, in order to further improve the dynamics of the slave motor, a speed reference compensation strategy is proposed. Finally, the proposed FCS-MPSC method is validated through comparative simulation results.