Robust Sensorless Control Against Thermally Degraded Speed Performance in an IM Drive Based Electric Vehicle

This article investigates and proposes an efficient control design to address the degradation in the mechanical speed of a traction machine drive (TMD) in an electric vehicle (EV) caused by thermal effects during its operation. Variations in the operating as well as ambient temperature cause unexpected uncertainties in TMD parameters such as stator and rotor resistances, which results in significant degradation in EV's speed performance capability. To mitigate this problem, an output feedback robust linear parameter varying (LPV) controller-observer set is designed using H ∞ control theory that enhances the EV's speed performance in field-oriented control (FOC) frame. The internal stability of the closed-loop control and the L2 gain bound are ensured by linear matrix inequalities. The performance of the proposed control technique is compared with that of conventional FOC, sliding mode control (SMC) and higher order sliding mode control (HOSMC) to validate its efficacy and advantages. The robustness of the proposed control technique is tested for an EV operation against the Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicles Test Procedure (WLTP) Class 3 driving cycle. The nonlinear MATLAB simulation results guarantee the effectiveness of the proposed controller-observer set. These results are verified experimentally on an induction machine drive setup.