A Sensorless Direct Torque Control Scheme Suitable for Electric Vehicles

In this paper a sensorless control is proposed to increase the efficiency of a Direct Torque Control (DTC) of an induction motor propelling an Electric Vehicle (EV). The proposed scheme uses an adaptive flux and speed observer that is based on a full order model of the induction motor. Moreover, it is evaluated on an EV global model taking into account the vehicle dynamics. Simulations were first carried out on a test vehicle propelled by a 37-kW induction motor to evaluate the consistency and the performance of the proposed control approach. The commonly used European drive cycle ECE-15 is adopted for simulation. The obtained results seem to be very promising. Then, the proposed control approach was experimentally implemented, on a TMS320F240 DSP-based development board, and tested on 1-kW induction motor. Experimental results show that the proposed control scheme is effective in terms of speed and torque performances. Indeed, it allows speed and torque ripple minimization. Moreover, the obtained results show that the proposed sensorless DTC scheme for induction motors is a good candidate for EVs propulsion.