Electric drives

This course is intended as a first course on electric machine drives. The basics of mechanics as well as selection of components (motor and converter) are covered. During the course, modelling and control concepts are introduced using a DC machine and a surface-mounted permanent-magnet synchronous machine (PMSM) as example machines. Other AC machine types are briefly discussed at the end of the course. Operating principles of a four-quadrant DC-DC converter and its pulse-width modulation are described in more detail, while three-phase converters are mainly left out of the scope of this course.

Course contents

• Role of electric machine drives
• DC motor model
• Mechanics
• Losses and heat transfer
• DC motor dynamics
• DC-DC conversion, PWM
• Cascade control of a DC motor drive
• Elementary AC machines, 3-phase systems
• Space-vector models
• Field-oriented control of a PMSM drive
• Other AC machine types, future trends

Learning outcomes

After completing the course, the student will be able to

• describe typical applications of electric drives and their performance requirements
• calculate the required electromagnetic torque of the motor for various mechanical loads
• build simulation models for cascade-controlled DC motor drives
• tune a speed controller based on the mechanical parameters
• select the motor and the converter for simple applications.

Course material

All material will be shared digitally to the students. The lecture notes of the course are available under an open license here: https://github.com/Aalto-Electric-Drives/electric-machine-drives

MATLAB and Simulink will be used in the assignments. The software is freely available to the students.

Teaching schedule

• Lectures and exercises on Otaniemi campus
• Exam on campus

See the schedules in Sisu closer to the course start. Recordings of the lectures are not available. Attendance in lectures and exercises is recommended, but it is also possible to study the materials independently.

Completion methods

The course contains two assignments (30 % of the maximum points) and the exam (70 % of the maximum points).

More information in the Aalto University study guide.

You can get a digital badge after completing this course.

electric machines, electric motors, power electronics, control, drives, sähkökoneet, sähkömoottorit, sähkökäytöt, säätötekniikka, tehoelektroniikka