Design and Implementation of Different Drive Topologies for Control of Induction Motor for Electric Vehicle Application

To improve driving range in Electric vehicles (EV), parallel-series connection of battery cells is a necessity. Supressing the circulating current in the battery board of parallel connected battery strings helps improve the lifespan of the batteries. This study presents a comparison of the requirements of parallel strings of batteries in three different popular topologies for open end winding induction motor (IM) drives in EV. The topologies analyzed are a 3-phase voltage source inverter (VSI), a Dual fed inverter and three single-phase H-Bridge VSIs. These converters are modulated using Space vector pulse width modulation (SVPWM) as it has better performance compared to Sine PWM. MATLAB-Simulink models are developed for the converter topologies. The simulation results show that the three single-phase inverter topology feeding the drive is the best alternative when compared on the basis of battery requirement and switch loss. Moreover, each H-bridge inverter (in the three single-phase inverter topology) can be used as charger and the problem of circulating current during charging will also be least as compared to other schemes.