Load Torque Compensator for Model Predictive Direct Current Control in High Power PMSM Drive Systems

The widely used cascade speed and torque controllers have a limited control performance in most high power applications due to the low switching frequency of power electronic converters and the convenience to avoid speed overshoots and oscillations for lifetime considerations. Model Predictive Direct Current Control (MPDCC) leads to an increase of torque control performance taking into account the discrete nature of inverters but temporary offsets and poor responses to load torque variations are still issues in speed control.
A load torque estimator is proposed in this paper in order to further improve dynamic behavior. It compensates the load torque influence on the speed control setting a feed forward torque reference value. The benefits are twice; the speed controller reaches the speed reference value without offsets which would need to be compensated by an integrator and a better response to load torque variations is obtained since they are detected and compensated leading to small speed variations. Moreover, the influence of parameter errors and disturbances has been analyzed and limited so that they play a minor role in operation.