A novel PWM scheme to eliminate the diode freewheeling in the inactive phase in BLDC motor

Abstract

The brushless DC motor (BLDCM) with trapezoidal electromotive force (back-EMF) waveform is used widely. In principle, when the motor runs in the 120° conduction mode, two of the three phases are active while the other phase is inactive at all times. However, a ripple current occurs in the inactive phase due to the diode freewheeling during the non-commutation period in the traditional pulse width modulation (PWM) methods, which aggravates the torque ripples. A new PWM method is proposed in this paper to eliminate the diode freewheeling during the non-commutation period in the inactive phase. As a result, the torque ripple is suppressed using the proposed method. The simulation and experimental results are demonstrated to verify the validity of the proposed PWM method.