Predictive Control of Brushless DC Generators

A predictive control of a brushless DC generator is presented in this paper. The tracking characteristic of the prime-mover is considered for setting the reference value of the electromagnetic torque developed by the generator. This reference is assumed in order to determine the switching pattern of the AC/DC converter, at each sampling period, under minimum Joule losses and minimum torque ripple constraints. In order to highlight the improved performances achievable by means of the proposed predictive control algorithm, two cases are considered: in the first one, the generator supplies a resistive load as in standalone applications, whereas, in the second one, it is connected to a constant voltage DC grid. Hence, the respective conversion systems are computer simulated in the Matlab Simulink environment and the results are compared to those of the traditional systems. The comparison reveals that, in both cases, the torque ripple minimization is achieved and more power can be delivered by using the proposed control technique with respect to those of traditional systems.