Proceedings of 2010 IEEE Student Conference on Research and Development (SCOReD 2010),

13 - 14 Dec 2010, Putrajaya, Malaysia

Analysis of Fuzzy Logic Controller for Permanent

Magnet Brushless DC Motor Drives
Tan Chee Siong, Baharuddin Ismail, Siti Fatimah Siraj, Mohd Faridun Naim Tajuddin, Noor Shahida Jamoshid, Mohd
Fayzul Mohammed, School of Electrical System Engineering, Universiti Malaysia Perlis, 01000, Perlis, Malaysia,
terry_tcs_5510@yahoo.com, baha@unimap.edu.my, m.faridun@unimap.edu.my

Abstract— This paper presents the analysis of Fuzzy Logic I I . SYSTEMS STRUCTURE
controller for permanent magnet brushless DC motor drive for
simulation and experimental results. Initially a fuzzy controller is A. Permanent-Magnet BLDC Motor Structure
developed by using MATLAB Fuzzy-Logic Toolbox and then
inserted into the Simulink model. The dynamic characteristics of Fig. 1 illustrates the structure of a typical brushless DC
the brushless dc motor such as speed, torque, currents and motor. The stator windings of BLDC are similar to those in a
voltages of the inverter components are easily observed and polyphase AC motor, and the rotor is composed of one or
analyzed by using the developed MATLAB model. The more permanent magnets. Brushless DC motors (BLDC)
simulation results are compared with TMS320F2808 DSP contain a powerful permanent magnet rotor and fixed
experimental results. The brushless direct current (BLDC) motor
stator windings. The stationary stator windings are usually
is successfully and efficiently controlled by Fuzzy logic controller.
three phases, which means that three separate voltages are
Keywords- Fuzzy logic controller; BLDC motor drives; simulation; supplied to three different set of windings [5]. Brushless DC
experimental set motors are different from AC synchronous motors in that
the former incorporates some means to detect the rotor
I. INTRODUCTION
position (or magnetic poles) to produce signals to control
In modern intelligent motion applications the demand to the electronic switches as shown in fig. 2.
the accurate speed and position control is increasing. BLDC
motors have some advantages over conventional brushed DC
motors and induction motors. Some of these are; better
speed versus torque characteristics, high dynamic response,
high efficiency, long operating life, noiseless operation and
higher speed ranges. In addition, BLDC motors are reliable,
easy to control, and inexpensive [1]. Due to their favorable
electrical and mechanical properties, BLDC motor are
widely used in servo application such as automotive,
aerospace, medical, instrumentation, actuation, robotics,
machine tools and industrial automation equipment. Many
machine design and control schemes have been developed to
improve the performance of BLDC motor drives. The
model of motor drives has to be known in order to
Figure 1. Transverse section of a brushless dc motor
implement an effective control in simulation. Furthermore,
fuzzy logic controllers (FLCs) are used to analyze BLDC
motor drives in literature [2]. The previous studies have made
a great contribution to BLDC motor drives. In this paper, a
comprehensive simulation model with fuzzy logic
controller is presented. MATLAB/fuzzy logic toolbox is
used to design FLC, which is integrated into simulations
with Simulink [3]. Besides, considering that the
computational time without affecting the accuracy of the
results obtained is very low, it can be said that the proposed
method is promising [4].
Figure 2. Diagram for BLDC motor

978-1-4244-8648-9/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE 436

 Fig. 3 shows the equivalent circuit of BLDC motor and
VSI system.

Figure 5. Structure of fuzzy logic controller

Figure 3. Voltage source inverter (VSI) and BLDC motor

B. Structure of fuzzy logic controller

Fig. 4 shows the designed control system for BLDC Figure 6. (a) triangle, (b) trapezoid, and (c) bell membership function
motor. The system contains two loops, the first loop is the
current control loop that accomplishes torque control of Fig. 7 illustrates the membership function used to
BLDC motor and the second loop is the speed control loop fuzzification two input values and defuzification output of
that adjusts the speed of BLDC motor. the fuzzy controller. For seven clusters in the membership
functions, seven linguistic variables are defined as:
Negative Big (NB), Negative Medium (NM), Negative
Small (NS), Zero (Z), Positive Small (PS), Positive Medium
(PM), and Positive Big (PB).

Figure 4. Fuzzy logic for BLDC motor drive system Figure 7. Membership functions of fuzzy logic controller

A sliding mode rule base used in fuzzy logic controller

Fig. 5 shows the basic structure of fuzzy logic controller.
Fuzzy logic’s linguistic terms are most often expressed is given in Table 1. The fuzzy inference operation is
in the form of logical implications, such as If-Then rules. implemented by using the 49 rules. The min-max
These rules define a range of values known as fuzzy compositional rule of inference and the center of gravity
membership functions [4]. Fuzzy membership functions method have been used in defuzzification process [5].
may be in the form of triangle, a trapezoid, a bell as shows
in fig. 6, or another appropriate form [6]. If p1 is NB and p2 is NB Then out is PB,
If p1 is NB and p2 is NM Then out is PB,
If p1 is NB and p2 is NS Then out is PM,
If p1 is NB and p2 is Z Then out is PM,

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 Figure 8. Matlab simulation diagram of fuzzy logic controller

TABLE I. RULE BASE OF FUZZY LOGIC CONTROLLER

(2)
Where; va , vb , and vc are phase voltages, R is
resistance, L is inductance, M is mutual inductance, ea
, eb , and ec are trapezoidal back EMFs.
The motion equation is:

(3)
C. Simulation structure of fuzzy in Matlab
The trapezoidal shape functions with limit values between
+1 and -1:
Fig. 8 shows the Matlab simulation diagram of Fuzzy
logic controller. The developed Matlab model is use to
observer the phase current waveforms, speed, torque and
maximun current.

III. MATHEMATICAL EQUATIONS

The trapezoidal back-EMF wave forms are modeled (4)

as a function of rotor position so that rotor position
can be actively calculated according to the operation The expression of electromagnetic torque:
speed. The back EMFs are expressed as a function of
rotor position (θ). Te = ke ( fa (θ) ia + fa (θ) ib + fc (θ) ic ) (5)

Speed and torque characteristics of BLDC motor:

(6)
(1) The error and the change in error:

Where ke is back-EMF constant, fa (Θ ) , fb (Θ ) , and fc e1[n] = wref [n]– wr [n] (7)

(Θ ) are the function of rotor position. e2[n] = e1 [n] – e1 [n-1] (8)

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 IV. RESULTS
A. MATLAB Simulations

To validate the control strategies as described,

digital simulation were carried out on a converter dc
motor drive system by using MATLAB/SIMULINK, the
used parameters in these system are given in table II.

TABLE II. THE PARAMETER OF DC MOTOR DRIVE SYSTEM

Armature resistance (Ra) 0.5 Ώ

Armature inductance (La) 8 mH
Back e.m.f constant (K) 0.55 V/rad/s
Mechanical inertia (J) 0.0465 kg.m2
Friction coefficient (B) 0.004 N.m/rad/s
Rated armature current (Ia) 10 A

Fig. 9 shows the phase current waveforms of the BLDC

motor when the rotor position at 4000 rpm. The phase
difference between Ia, Ib and Ic is approximate to 120
degrees. The peak currents value is approximate to 9 A for
all Ia, Ib and Ic.

Figure 10. Speed of BLDC motor, Electromagnetic torque and maximum

current (Imax)

Fig. 11 shows the speed for FLC by developed model.

The speeds reach the desired value 4000rpm at the time
5ms.

Figure 9. Phase current waveforms based on the rotor position at 4000 Figure 11. Speeds responce for FLC
rpm
Fig. 12 demonstrates that BLDC motor is setting to
4000 rpm successfully, when the load torque changes occurs
Fig. 10 shows the dynamic responses of the
either load increased or decrease.
speed, torque and Imax, respectively. The reference
value of maximum current (Imax) is computed from the
generated constant torque reference.

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 Figure 12. Speeds responce for FLC on load change

B. Experimental

The TMS320F2808 DSP and BLDC motor was

used to observed the speed response and the phase current Figure 14. Phase current waveforms based on the rotor position at 4000
waveforms. Fig. 13 shows the experimental set of the rpm
controller and BLDC motor.
Fig. 15 shows the experimental results of Speed of
BLDC motor, Electromagnetic torque and maximum current
(Imax) by CCStudio when the rotor position at 4000 rpm.

Figure 13. The experimental set

Fig. 14 shows the experimental results for phase current

waveforms of the BLDC motor by CCStudio when the
rotor position at 4000 rpm. The phase difference between
Ia, Ib and Ic is approximate to 120 degree and the value of
the current magnitude for Ia, Ia and Ic is about 9A.
Figure 15. Speed of BLDC motor, Electromagnetic torque and maximum
current (Imax)

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 Fig. 16 Shows the hall sensor outputs of the BLDC effectively considered. It is seen that the desired real speed
motor that observed on ossilocope when the rotor position at and torque values could be reached in a short time by
4000 rpm. The phase different between 3 waveforms is FLC controller even sudden load changes or disturbance.
about 120 degrees.
The result paired with simulink is a good simulation tool
for modeling and analyze fuzzy logic controlled brushless
DC motor drives.
Besides, both simulated results and experimental results
shows very good closed agreement.

I. REFFRENCES

[1] P. Yedamale, Brushless DC (BLDC) Motor Fundamentals.

Chandler, AZ: Microchip Technology, Inc., last access; March 15,
2009.[Online].Available:http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/Ma
rket_Communication/Feb%202009%20microSOLUTIONS.pdf
[2] R. Akkaya, A.A. Kulaksız, and O Aydogdu, DSP implementation
of a PV system with GA-MLP-NN based MPPT controller
supplying BLDC motor drive, Energy Conv. and Management 48,
210-218, 2007.
[3] Tan Chee Siong, Baharuddin; M.Fayzul; M.Faridun N.T, Study of Fuzzy
and PI Controller for Permanent-Magnet Brushless DC Motor Drive, IEEE
International Power Engineering and Optimization Conference.
[4] C.W. Hung; C.T. Lin, and C.W. Liu, An Efficient Simulation
Figure 16. Hall effects of BLDC motor Technique for the Variable Sampling Effect of BLDC Motor
Applications, IECON 2007, pp. 1175–1179, 2007
[5] A. Rubai, A. Ofoli, and M. Castro, dSPACE DSP-Based Rapid
Fig. 17 shows the speed response of the experimental Prototyping of Fuzzy PID Controls for High Performance
set that observed by Code Composer Studio (CCStudio). Brushless Servo Drives, IEEE Industry Applications Conference,
41st IAS Annual Meeting, page(s):1360–1364, 2006
The speed of the motor reached the desired value or steady state
[6] B. Sing, A.H.N. Reddy, and S.S. Murthy, Gain Scheduling
at time approximate 5ms. A very small value of the Control of Permanent Magnet Brushless dc Motor, IE(I) Journal-EL
overshoot and stable performance for experimental result, 84, 52-62, 2003
its about 50rpm from the desired value.

Figure 17. Speed responce of BLDC motor

V. CONCLUSION

As a conclusion, a comprehensive analysis of

brushless DC drive system has been performed by using
fuzzy logic controller. The simulation model which is
implemented in a modular manner under MATLAB
environment allows dynamic characteristics such as phase
currents, rotor speed, and mechanical torque can be

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