Middle Technical University AC & DC Drives

Electrical Engineering Technical College 2nd Course

Electrical Power Technical Engineering Dept. Mohammed D. Altamemi
Experiment No. 3
Simulink Model of PI Current Control of a DC-Motor

3-1 AIM:
The purpose of this experiment is to design and implement a Simulink Model
of PI current control of a DC Motor.
3-2 Theory:
Once the DC-motor model is built, in Experiment No.2, the controllers can be
added and tuned. Start with the current loop for which a PI controller is required.
To design PI current controller, you have to calculate Proportional and
integrated constants (Ki_i, and Kp_i) from DC motor parameters:

3-2 Procedure:
1. Build the model for a PI controller see Fig.3.1. Double click the integrator
block and enable limit output. Then set the Upper and Lower saturation
limits to [+lim/-lim]. The lim value should be set to 1 (in the .m file, or in
work space) as the absolute maximum value of control voltage is 1, which is
the input to Kpwm block.
2. The armature current is fed back to the controller input.

Fig. 3.1, PI controller model

M.D.
Middle Technical University AC & DC Drives
Electrical Engineering Technical College 2nd Course
Electrical Power Technical Engineering Dept. Mohammed D. Altamemi
3. Design current controller for a bandwidth of 100 Hz (628.3 rad/sec) (phase
margin 90 deg).
4. The parameters of the PI controller (namely Kp_i and Ki_i) are computed
using the motor parameters, which were evaluated in the earlier experiment.
This procedure is described in equations (1 and 4) in theory.
5. Create the file for a current controlled DC motor by using great subsystem as
shown in Fig 3.2(a).

(a), Simulink model for current controller

(b) Current waveform for 2A current (c) Speed waveform for 2A

reference current reference

(d) Torque waveform for 2A current reference

Figure 3.2: Simulink model and result for current control loop

M.D.
Middle Technical University AC & DC Drives
Electrical Engineering Technical College 2nd Course
Electrical Power Technical Engineering Dept. Mohammed D. Altamemi
6. Running the Simulink model for the current controller with reference current
as 2A, results similar to the Fig.3.2 (b), Fig. 3.2 (c), and Fig. 3.2(d) will be
obtained.
7. Set the value of Kp_i and Ki_i in Matlab work space (or in the m-file). Also set
the values of Kpwm = 42, Ia_ref = 1. Run the m-file before running the
simulation, which will load the values of all the variables.
8. Run this simulation (for 0.005 sec, variable step , time step 1e-4). Save the
plots for the report.
9. Once the response in current is considered optimal (low overshoot, fast rise-
time, zero steady state error), the speed controller can be designed.
3-3 Discussion:
1. Try to design a speed PI controller for the speed loop (‘PI_Speed’), and add it to
the Simulink model. Design the speed controller for a bandwidth of 10Hz (62.83
rad/sec) (Phase margin 60 deg).

M.D.