Speed control and electrical braking of axial flux BLDC motor

Axial flux brushless direct current motors (AFBLDC) are becoming popular in many applications including electrical vehicles because of their ability to meet the demand of high power density, high efficiency, wide speed range, robustness, low cost and less maintenance. In this paper, AFBLDC motor drive with single sided configuration having 24 stator poles and 32 permanent magnets on the rotor is proposed. It is driven by six pulse inverter that is fed from a single phase AC supply through controlled AC to DC converter. The speed control and braking methods are also proposed based on pulse width modulation technique. The overall scheme is simulated in MATLAB environment and tested under different operating conditions. A prototype of proposed AFBLDC motor drive is designed and fabricated. The control methods are implemented using DSC dsPIC33EP256MC202 digital signal controller. Tests are performed on this prototype to validate its performance at different speeds with and without braking mode. It is observed that the proposed scheme works effectively and can be used as wheel direct driven motor for electrical vehicle.