Predictive current control of asymmetrical six-phase induction motor without weighting factors

Control of multi-phase machine in both healthy and post-fault operations has recently gained considerable interest. Finite control set model predictive control (FCS-MPC), in particular, has been proposed to drive multi-phase machines to avoid sophisticated pulse width modulation (PWM) methods. Nevertheless, FCS-MPC generally experiences some technical limitations. One of the widely reported challenges related to FCS-MPC is the weighting factor (WF) design, which is empirically designed and found to be an operating point dependent factor. Thus, assuming a constant WF can result in poor performance. In this paper, the prediction stage of FCS-MPC for asymmetrical six-phase (A6P) induction motor (IM) has been reformulated based on double dq (2dq) modeling approach. Unlike the reported vector space decomposing (VSD)-based FCS-MPC algorithms, the proposed approach results in four control variables (the stator sequence currents i_sα1,i_sβ1,i_sα2, and i_sβ2) which have the same priority. Thus, equal weighting factors could be used in the cost function, which will inherently minimize the effect of the circulating x-y current components. Performance comparison of the proposed method against VSD-based FCS-MPC is investigated. The theoretical findings are experimentally validated using a 1 kW prototype six-phase IM.