Brushless DC Hub Motor Drive Control for Electric Vehicle Applications

Global warming, air pollution and sound pollution are major environmental problems faced by today's world. Environmental pollution and increasing cost of fuels had led to the importance of using alternate sources for transportation since Internal combustion (IC) engine vehicles carries more than 40% of the pollution. Battery electric vehicles (BEV) is an alternative which received high attention in transportation industry. This paper focus on the control of Brushless DC (BLDC) motor which is used to drive the Electric two-wheeler. Hardware implementation of the motor is developed and an Atmega 328 microcontroller is utilized to control the motor which is provides a speed control with current commutation. A 60V, 1000W BLDC hub Motor is used to meet the drive requirements. The mathematical modeling of BLDC motor is discussed with the mathematical equations. MATLAB Simulation is developed, and the closed loop speed control is done in Simulink. PWM pulses generated from the MCU as per the commutation sequence and loaded to control the switches of 3-phase inverter and in response to the driver inputs (start/stop, accelerator, brake) the motor speeds are dynamically varied.