Design and control of the phase current of a brushless dc motor to eliminate cogging torque

This paper presents a design and control method of the phase current to reduce the torque ripple of a brushless dc (BLDC) motor by eliminating cogging torque. The cogging torque is the main source of torque ripple and consequently of speed error, and it is also the excitation source to generate the vibration and noise of a motor. This research proposes a modified current wave form, which is composed of main and auxiliary currents. The former is the conventional current to generate the commutating torque. The latter generates the torque with the same magnitude and opposite sign of the corresponding cogging torque at the given position in order to eliminate the cogging torque. Time-stepping finite element method simulation considering pulse-width-modulation switching method has been performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, and it shows that this proposed method reduces torque ripple by 36%. A digital-signal-processor-based controller is also developed to implement the proposed method, and it shows that this proposed method reduces the speed ripple significantly. (C) 2006 American Institute of Physics.