Passivity-based control of a class of Blondel-Park transformable electric machines

Concerns the extension to the general rotating electric machine model of the passivity-based controller method for induction motors. The motor's passivity properties are used at 2 levels. First, we prove that the motor model can be decomposed as the feedback interconnection of two passive subsystems (essentially, the electrical and mechanical dynamics). Then, we design a torque-tracking controller that preserves passivity for the electrical subsystem and leaves the mechanical part as a passive disturbance. This leads to the cascaded controller structure which is typically analyzed involving time-scale separation. Our aim is to characterize a class of machines for which such a passivity-based controller solves the output feedback torque-tracking problem. The class consists of machines whose nonactuated dynamics are damped and whose dynamics can be decoupled. This requires that the air-gap magnetomotive force must be suitably approximated by the first harmonic in its Fourier expansion. These conditions have a clear physical interpretation in terms of the couplings between its dynamics and are satisfied by many machines. The passivity-based controller presented reduces to the well-known indirect vector controller for current-fed induction machines. Our developments constitute an extension to voltage-fed machines of this de facto standard in industrial applications.