2011 Fourth International Conference on Intelligent Computation Technology and Automation

Design of BLDC Sensorless Control System for Vehicle Fuel Pump

Wang Dafang
School of Automobile Engineering Harbin Institute of Technology WeiHai, China wdflcjl@163.com

Zheng Jiuyang
School of Automobile Engineering Harbin Institute of Technology WeiHai, China jiuyang_0617@163.com

Jin Yi
Department of Mechanical Engineering Academy of Armored Forces Engineering Beijing, China 13581748524@163.com

Zhao Guifan
School of Automobile Engineering Harbin Institute of Technology WeiHai, China zgf7071@163.com

AbstractThis paper designs a kind of BLDC sensorless controll system for vehicle fuel pump. The control system uses 78F9222 of NEC as the core control unit, and uses Back EMF detection method to achieve the sensorless control for BLDC. The system can implement over-current protection, overvoltage protection and overtemperature protection. Loading test shows that the control system has high performance to meet the actual needs. Keywords-BLDC; vehicle fuel pump; Back EMF detection method; sensorless control system; 78F9222

same PA2792GR in the same bridge. This design is conducive to decreasing the size of the controller.

US

I.

INTRODUCTION

Electric fuel pump is the main component of vehicle fuel supply system. It is immersed in fuel of fuel tank. Its role is to suck fuel out from the fuel tank and supply fuel to the engine cylinder through the injectors[1]. All along, electric fuel pump uses a brush DC motor as its power plant. However, DC motor has a series disadvantages, such as short life-span, low reliability and bad EMC characteristic[1]. Brushless DC motor not only has good speed performance, but also has a long operating life, no mechanical commutation spark and electromagnetic noise and interference[2]. In this paper, brushless DC motor control system uses Back-EMF method to detect the rotor position to achieve the sensorless control for BLDC. Loading tests prove that the sensorless controlled BLDC for fuel pump could replace the original brushed DC motor and satisfy the actual demands II. SYSTEM HARDWARE STRUCTURE

Figure 1. BLDC main circuit B. Control circuit The control system uses 78F9222 of NEC as the core control unit. Shown in Figure 2, both the Back EMF zero crossing detection signal and supply voltage detection signal are respectively connected with the corresponding A /D channel of the microcontroller. The six I/O ports of the MCU send control signals to the corresponding power switch. The PWM port will also send control signal to transistors. The BLDC control system is shown in Figure 2.

A. Main circuit In this paper, the main circuit of the control system uses the NEC Electronics' PA2792GR as the switch of the main circuit. The PA2792GR is N- and P-channel MOS Field Effect Transistors designed for Motor Drive application. Shown in Figure 2, the inverter is composed of three power switches. For example, VT1 and VT2 are two parts of the

Figure 2. BLDC control system C. Power conversion module While the motor's rated voltage is 12V, the supply voltage of the MCU is 5V. It is necessary to convert +12 V into +5V. Power conversion module designed in this paper is shown in Figure 3.
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978-0-7695-4353-6/11 $26.00 2011 IEEE DOI 10.1109/ICICTA.2011.166

1 ea = ua 0 U S 2 1 eb = ub 0 U S 2 1 ec = uc 0 U S 2

In the above equation, the Figure 3. Diagram of the power conversion module III. SOFTWARE DESIGN OF THE CONTROL SYSTEM

ea , eb and

ec respectively represent the back EMF of phase A, phase B and phase C; the ua 0 , ub 0 and uc 0

A. Motor start control When brushless DC motor is in the conditions of static or low speed running, it is difficult to correctly detect the back EMF. So we must solve two questions about the motor start: the first problem is about the motor start when the rotor is stationary; the second problem is about simultaneous switching. The approach in this paper is called "three stage" start mode[3]. Three stage start mode contains three states: rotor positioning, accelerating and switching stages. When brushless DC motor is in the condition of static, the rotor initial position is unknown. When we supply power to the system and give it any set of trigger pulse, there will be a flux whose amplitude and direction both are constant in air gap. Just make sure that its amplitude is large enough, then this flux will be able to locate rotor in its direction in some time. This method will determine the initial rotor position. According to the phase relationship between the stator and rotor, the control system makes the corresponding power transistor opened in turn. As the motor speed increases gradually, back EMF also increases gradually. When the Back-EMF increases to a certain value, it switches from accelerating to switching stages(shown in Figure 4).

respectively represent the terminal voltage of phase A, phase B and phase C; the U S represents the supply voltage(Shown in Figure 1). Each cycle has six states. When the rotor turns 60 electrical angle, the status will be changed. System controls the state changes through software. After back-EMF zero crossing, the moment that rotor turns 30 electrical angle is the motor commutation point[2] [4] [5]. C. Protection function The motor controller must be integrated with the pump body, so the size of the controller should be limited. In the control system, most of the protection functions are achieved by software. When the parameter exceeds a set value, the program automatically put all the switches and PWM off. 1) Overtemperature protection The pump motor (including controller) must be immersed in oil, so it's need to detect the temperature of controller to prevent fire caused by high temperature. The changes in voltage across the thermistor can reflect change in resistance, and thus reflect the temperature changes. 2) Over-current protection When the switches are turned on, by detecting ua 0 ,

ub 0 and uc0 , which are the corresponding terminal voltage of

phase A, phase B and phase C, we can obtain the current value at this time. The corresponding terminal voltage is also the voltage across the drain-source resistor. The drain-source resistance is determined by turn-on voltage and channel temperature. The rough value of the resistance can be found through manual. And then the exact value can be obtained by realtime temperature compensation. After the terminal voltage being divided by the corresponding exact value of the drainsource resistance, you can get the corresponding current value, and then the over-current protection can be achieved. 3) Overvoltage protection Shown in figure 3, The V-SENCE is in proportion to the supply voltage and is less than 5 V. Through comparing the V-SENCE value collected by the controller with the set value, we can achieve 24V overvoltage protection.

Us Uc U0

f
f0 fs

Figure 4. Diagram of three stage start mode B. Motor commutation control In this paper, the equations of Back-EMF zero crossing detection are as follows:

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IV.

EXPERIMENTAL RESULT

A. Bus current waveform In the no-load conditions, we use clamp current transformer to measure bus current. The resulting output voltage waveform is shown in Figure 5. Bus current waveform within a 360 electric angle is composed of six consecutive waveform segments.

current curve (shown in Figure 7) and the motor speed curve (shown in Figure 8).

Figure 5. Bus current waveform B. Terminal voltage waveform In the no-load conditions, the terminal voltage waveforms of phase A, phase B and phase C are shown in Figure 6.

Figure 8. Motor speed curve under different pressures From the two curves, we can come to a conclusion that the armature current increases gradually and motor speed gradually decreases with the increase of the pressure inside the fuel tank. The results are consistent with the theory. V. CONCLUSION Based on actual needs, this paper designs a kind of BLDC sensorless controll system for vehicle fuel pump. After rigorous testing, the electric fuel pump can work normally and achieve over-current protection, overvoltage protection and overtemperature protection. The performance indicators are to meet the national standard and the actual needs. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The Project supported by the National Laboratory for Electric Vehicles Research Funds.(BIT-NELEV-2010-1) This Project is also supported by tackling key problems in science and technology of WeiHai.(2009-3-93)

Figure 6. Terminal voltage waveform C. Motor speed curve and current curve When the supply voltage and the working condition are not changed, both motor speed and armature current are stable.
[1]

n/rpm

REFERENCES
Mo Yujie, Research of BLDC for electric fuel pump and its sensorless control system, Master Thesis of Zhejiang University, 2007. Sun Jianzhong, Bai Fengxian, Special Motor and Control, China Water Power Press: Beijing, 2005. Huang Qingxin, Liang Hui, DSP Control System of Brushless DC Motor without Position Sensor, Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Electrical Machines and Systems, v 1, 2005, pp. 371-375. Wang Chuanyang, Xu Longya, A Novel Approach for Sensorless Control of PM Machines Down to Zero Speed Without Signal Injecfion oF Special PWM Technique, IEEE TRANSA ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL.19, NO. 6, NOVEMBER 2004. Zhang Xiangjun, Chen Boshi, Zhu Pingping, EMF Zero-crossing Detection Algorithm and Phase Correction of BLDC Sensorless Control, Electric Transmission, 2001.

[2] [3]

[4]

[5]

Figure 7. Motor current curve under different pressures According to the terminal voltage curve and bus current value under different pressures, we can get the armature

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