Capacitance Estimation Method of DC-Link Capacitors for BLDC Motor Drive Systems

This paper proposes a capacitance estimation method of the dc-link capacitor for brushless DC motor (BLDCM) drive systems. In order to estimate the dc-link capacitance, the BLDCM is operated in quadrant-II or -IV among four-quadrant operation. Quadrant-II and -IV are called reverse braking and forward braking, respectively. During the braking operation of the BLDCM, the capacitor is charged by the phase current and then the voltage is increased during the braking operation time. The capacitor current and voltage can be obtained by using the phase current sensor of BLDCM and the dc-link voltage sensor. The capacitance and be easily obtained by the voltage equation of the capacitor. The proposed method guarantees the reliable and simple calculation of the dc-link capacitance without additional hardware system except several the sensors already installed for the motor control system. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified through both the simulation and experimental results.