Current control with improved tracking and harmonic performance for a voltage source inverter driving a saturated induction motor

Magnetic saturation in induction motors is a very common, complex and undesirable phenomenon. It reduces the accuracy of drive control with respect to the fundamental current/voltage components, and gives rise to additional harmonics which degrades the total harmonic performance of the drive. The existing mitigation strategies include accurate modeling of the saturated motor and harmonic filtering. A different approach is presented in this paper. An advanced control scheme is designed which specifically targets and eliminates the tracking error at fundamental frequency and harmonic components produced by magnetic saturation. The paper includes theoretical development of the control scheme by utilizing general Model Predictive Control (MPC) framework. The findings of the paper are illustrated by extensive simulation results.