Modular Stator Flux and Torque Control of Multi-Three-Phase Induction Motor Drives

The recent advancements of power electronics are encouraging the development of the multiphase drives in both transport electrification and energy production applications. Among the multiphase solutions, the “multi-three-phase” drives are gaining impressive attention from the industry since they can be configured as multiple three-phase units operating in parallel. In this way, the three-phase technologies can be used, leading to a significant reduction in the costs and design time. Although the multi-three-phase drives possess natural modularity in terms of both machine winding and power converter, few control solutions able to implement a modular regulation of the torque are available in the literature. Therefore, this article proposes a control scheme implementing an independent regulation of the stator flux amplitude and torque contribution belonging to each winding set of a multi-three-phase induction machine. The proposed control solution can manage the voltage and current constraints introduced by each inverter unit. Besides, torque-sharing strategies among the three-phase sets of the machine can be implemented. Experimental results are provided for a modular power converter feeding a 12-phase induction machine with a quadruple-three-phase configuration, thus demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed solution.