Design of four-quadrant power hardware-in-the-loop brushless DC motor emulator

Since it is difficult, costly, and time-consuming to test the power electronic converter of Brushless DC Motor (BLDCM) in all operating conditions with a motor-load test bench, this paper proposes a four-quadrant Power Hardware-In-the-Loop (PHIL) BLDCM emulator, which submits a methods of sampling and calculation based on the different operating regions. it can replace the motor-load test bench in the performance test and the reliability test of the BLDCM controller under a two-phase conduction control mode. Meanwhile, the paper employs a piecewise method to optimize the sampling and model calculation processes of the emulator. This PHIL BLDCM emulator comprises a real-time simulator, a motor simulation converter, and a multi-stage bidirectional converter. The real-time simulator measures the output PWM voltages of the power electronic converter and calculates the behavior of the electric motor by the real-time calculation model. The motor simulation converter receives the calculated currents as the control instruction and generates the currents of the emulator. In the meantime, the multi-stage bidirectional converter maintains the energy balance between the input and output of the emulator and realizes the PHIL simulation to the BLDCM operating in different states. The experimental results show that the proposed PHIL BLDCM emulator has many benefits, such as high simulation precision, good real-time performance, and flexible operation, it can achieve the PHIL simulation to the real BLDCM and the mechanical-load in the test of the BLDCM controller. © 2021, Editorial Board of JBUAA. All right reserved.