A PC-BASED MEASUREMENT AND CONTROL SYSTEM FOR DC MOTORS

Paul I-Hai Lin, Member, IEEE

Electrical Engineering Tech.

Muhammad Rashid, Senior Member, IEEE

Engineering Department

Indiana University-Purdue University

'Fort Wayne

ABSTRACT
The design of a PC-based measurement and control
system for teaching and research in a DC drive
laboratory is described. This system uses a personal
computer (PC) in conjunction with analog and digital,
110 board, a signal sensing and conditioning
subsystem for the acquisition and subsequent
processing of current, voltage, and speed signals,
and a power amplifier module for driving the dc motor
under testing. The system is built and tested in the
electric machinery laboratary and is proven to be a
great teaching and research tool. It improves
reliablity and productivity of dc motor measurement
in the laboratory and provides such features as speed
control, overload identification and protection, and
graphics display of measured variables. The software
subsystem is written in the C language and is able to
perform the tasks associated with the real-time
measurement and control of a dc motor. The design
cosiderations and system related constraints are
presented. The hardware and software subsystems are
discussed. Some possible practical applications are
also discussed.

I. INTRODUCTION
Separately excited dc motors are often used in
applications requiring precise control of speed and
torque over a wide range. Recently, considerable
attention has been focused on the study of
microprocessor-based dc motor controllers using
digital filter [E], PI controller [3][4], and in
particular, adaptive control schemes with reference
[ 2 1 [ 61 [ 71.
These
algorithms
has
been
model
implemented using dedicated 8- and/or 16-bit
microprocessors. It is generally agreed that using
microprocessors to handle real-time dc motor control
problems can offer such advantages as fewer
components, lower cost, flexibility, and improved
reliability [ e ] . Clearly, the current trend in
designning microprocessor-based dc motor control systems is toward the use of reduced models and adaptive
algorithms to ensure that microprocessors are working
with less computational efforts and imprecisely
modelled plants.
This paper considers the dc motor speed control
problem using a 16-bit PC while the plant model is
incompletely
defined
and
data
acquisition,
measurement,
calculations,
interactive
system
operation, and graphics report generation are all
needed to be performed by the same PC at the same
time. An experimental PC-based measurement and
control system for dc motors has been built and
tested in a laboratory environment. This system
consists of a PC, an analog and digital interface
card, signal conditioning modules, and a power driver
and amplifier module. It is designed not only to
offer a cost-effective solution to the continually
increasing need for using computer in engineering
laboratory but also to maximize the efficiency of
testing jobs and therefore ultimately improves the

user's productivity. In addition, this system can be

used to perform research in the areas of modern
control theory: sample-data control, PID control, and
adaptive control because these controllers can be
easily implemented and modified through software
functions. The control program for the system is
written in C language. Other features of the control
software
include overload
identification
and
protection, and graphics displays of such variables
as current, voltage, and power of the motor.
Our presentation is organized as follows. The
wthematical model of a separated excited dc motor is
specified in section 11. Section I11 is served to
describe the characteristics of the desired system.
Possible digital control algorithms for this system
is briefed in section V. Hardware development and
software development are depicted in section VI and
VII, respectively. Finally, the result and conclusion
are used to comment the performance of the system and
possible applications.

11. MATHEMATICAL MODEL OF THE PLANT

To develop a mathematical model for a separately
excited dc motor, we assume that the field current is
kept constant, the back emf ea is linearly
proportiona1,to the angular velocity of the motor
shaft, and the torque Te is linearly proportional to
the armature current. These assumptions allow us to
obtain the decoupled effects of controls from the
field and armature inputs. Therefore, the equations
that governing the behavior of this motor can be
given as the following:

where

Te = electromagnetic torque
= torque constant
Ke = back emf constant
T1 = equivalent working torque of the load
tm = mechanical load time constant ( J I B )
B
= viscous friction coefficient
J
= total equivalent inertia
n
= motor speed (radians per second)
vt = armature terminals voltage
ea = speed voltage or back-emf

Kt

90KH 2935-5/90/0000-1829$1.0001990 IEEE

ia =
=
te =
=
L
R

armature current
armature resistance
electrical time constant L/R
armature inductance

A block diagram as shown in Fig. 1 can be used

to represent the physical variables of the
armature-controlled motor. The transfer function
between armature voltage vt(s) and the motor speed
n(s) can be represented as a second-order system
equation (5). Note that the viscous friction
coefficient B is neglected and term J .includes
motor's inertia J
, and load's inertia Jp
-

Torque (oz
0
3.93
7.89
12.1
16.1
24.0

Load
Amperes
No Load
0.32
114
1.0
214
1.7
314
2.4
414
3.1
Over Load
4.5
Table 1.

ft)

Load performance table.

% (0.491 kg-mjamp) is calculated

The torque constant

using

n(s)
=

(s2 J L +

VtC 8 )

J R +

q d

(5)

where T2 and T1 are the motor torque corresponding to

current I2 and I1 respectively. The voltage constant
Keis 0.491 v/rad/s. The motor's electrical time and
mechanical time constants are calculated as the
follows:
L
time constant = - = 7.29 ms

(7)

Fig. 1

The block diagram of the dc motor.

mechanical time constant =

Jm R
~

Kt

(8)

In addition, the two poles of the machine can be

calculated as:
l/te = R/L = 137.17 radfs
(9)
= V $ ( R J m ) = 33.44 rad/s
(10)
lftm

Design emphasis of a control system tends to vary

depending on the type of the end user. Since, our
system is intended to be used to perform control,
data acquistion and measurement of dc motors in a
laboratory environment, therefore
some functions
including information display, supervisory control,
data calculation, data storage and reports, and alarm
processing are also desirable. These requirements may
pose
many
challenging
problems
on
those
microprocessor-based dc motor speed and/or position
control systems found in [2]-[6].
The control objective of this experimental
PC-based system is to drive the motor speed n(t) to
follow the command speed and maintain this speed with
an acceptable error such that the measurement on the
motor can also be performed by the system. The
system's main functional block diagram for the
desired system is defined as shown in Figure 2. The
characteristics of each block is defined as follows.

The mathematical model of the plant is obtained

in section 11. Since the load inertia J1 is unknown
and load chracteristics is not perfectly known,
consequently, the precise determination of the model
is not possible. If the inertia J1 of the load is
assume to be equal to J m r then J = 24, can be used
for finding the tranefer function of the plant.
The Controller. In this experimental setup, the PC
controller is expected to perform the following functions, in addition to the function of the digital
controller:
1. Act as a user-machine interface: displaying
menu, receiving commands, and reporting status
2. Read voltage, current, and speed feedback;
stores data on to disk
3. Perform signal conditioning
4. Outputs the speed command

I
Fig. 2

Ke

= 29.9 ms

111. DESCRIPTION OF THE DESIRED SYSTEM

Analoa-to-Diaital Converter (ADC): The ADC interface

includes a 16-channel analog multiplexer, a sample
and hold circuit, and a 10-bit AID converter. This
multiplexed ADC is used to sample discrete feedback
values of ia(k), vt(k), and n(k) and then store them
in arrays. The ia(k) is measured through a current
sensing resistor (0.01 ohm) in series with the
armature circuit and is used to provide a current
loop feedback. The amature voltage vt(k) is measured
through a voltage divider circuit across the armature
terminals. The speed feedback is provided through a
tachogenerator. The tachogenerator being used in this
system has a transfer function of SKI where K1 is 10
V/lOOO rpm. The ADC conversion time is small enough
in comparison with the response of the system within
regular sampling intervals. The sampling time
interval T, between sampling times, can be adjusted

Overall experimental system chosen.

Control Plant.
The control plant is a 1/3-hpr
115-volt, 3.4-amp, 1725-rpm dc separately excited
motor with a rated field current of 0.4-amp and the
parameters as the follows:
Armature resistance:
R = 3.8 ohms at 25 c
Armature, inductance:
L = 27.7 mH
2
Motor's Moment of Inertia: Jm = 1.9 E-3 kg-m
Parameters % and Ke are obtained from load
performance table and are shown below.

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through software time delay functions. Faster

sampling rate will reduce T, however, it will require
a faster computer and signal converters in order to
accomplish the needed tasks within the shorter time
intervals.
piaital-to-Analoa Converter (DAC): A DAC interface
accepts a digit sequence from the PC and output
analog voltage to a linaer amplifier which then
control the armature voltage vt(t).
A DAC can be
modeled as a zero-order hold with a transfer function
Of

.-ST

H(s) =

s
or its equivalent impulse response
h(t) =

u(t)

u(t

- T)

(12)

The ideal reconstruction of a sampled-data can be

expected if a low pass filter with a low cutoff
frequency is used for removing high-frequency
components generated by the output of the DAC.
IV. DIGITAL CONTROLLER
When designing a compensator for a given plant,
the usual design objective is to stabilize the
close-loop system and, at the same time, to satisfy
some type of performance criterion such as small
overshoot,
asymptotic
tracking,
disturbance
rejection, or insensitivity to model errors [9]. It
has been shown that control schemes such as P-I, I-P,
and P-I-D can be implemented in software using a
microprocessor to gain such advantages as the
elimination of initial current overshoot problem of
analog P-I control, reliability, flexibility, and
noise immunity [3],[4]. However, in yractice, no
model is complete, nor can its parameters be
specified exactly. Therefore, the problem of finding
the best set of coefficients for those controllers
can be difficult and time consuming. The use of model
reference adaptive control (MARC) in [2],[6] clearly
pointed out that the MARC is one of the promising
methods to cope with both parameter variations of dc
motors and force disturbance.
The objective of this section is to formulate a
set of control strategies for the speed control
problem of a separated excited dc motor with current,
voltage, and speed feedback. Due to the characteristics of our system as mentioned earlier, we
propose a flexible controller using minimum time and
control software functions to detect changes in
dynamics of properties of signals and system such as
start-up, over current, lost field, short circuit
(failure) detection, speed tracking, and new speed
prediction. Computational procedures, PI, PID,
discrete state space approach, state observer, and/or
and adaptive methods can be added independently for
experiments and for meeting performance criteria.
Since the ia, n, and vt are always measurable, we
consider using these output feedback for control the
dynamic of the system. The equations (2) and (4) can
also be discretized using the first-order Euler approximation as:

Tdkl
n[k+l]

= n[k] +

- T1

(14)

J
Where T is the time interval between samples and k =
t/T.
The error is larger if we choose larger T; the
error is due to the numerical integrration. If we
decrease T, the error decreases to a minimum value.
However, if the T is made sufficiently small, the
round-off errors becomes appreciable [9]. These
equations can be solved recursively by the PC without
actually solving for the state transition matrix.
However, ia[k], vt[k], n[k] can be measured every T
seconds. We use full state beedback and an observer
to predict the necessary change. Hence, the current
state of n at next sample n[k+l] is determined from
the current state n[k] and the current input and
current output. Suppose that there is an incremental
change in ia[k+l] as a function of the incremental
change in armature voltage as described by (13).
This will casue an incremental change in Tdk+l]. As
a result, the motor speed will also increase and the
controller produces a change in vt[k] so that the
steady-state change in motor speed is zero. Refer to
Fig. 3, it is obvious that these equations can be
realized as a software function which is part of the
controller. It uses integral of the error between the
measured and desired speed levels to determine the
necessary change. Note that the Z-las shown in Fig.
3 is the unit time delay.

ITI

-vi&
43-1

431

Fig. 3 Block diagram of a control process given by

Eq. (13-14)

The controller is expected to invoke one of the

following control laws at any given instant of time
interval based on the values of the partially given
plant model and the feedback states. This adaptive
controller can select appropriate operations to
interact with the plant in a closed-loop feedback
configuration. We summarize the control procedures
that we propose for this motor controller as the
follows:
1) Start-up control: It can recognize that the motor
is being started since that the initial states
of ia(t), n(t), and vt(t) are all zero. Therefore
a faster command is applied to bring the motor
speed up to reference value.
2) Fault recognition and handling capability:
case 1: short circuit detected; action 1: isolate
the motor (shut down).
case 2: over current detected; action 2: wait for
a period of time and continue monitoring
ia changes, if situation persists then
shut down the system.
case 3: lost field; action 3: if lost field then
shut down the system.

(13)

1831

The amplifier and sensing circuit diagram, as

shown in Fig. 5, consists of a power amplifier
module, a current sensing module, an armature voltage
sensing module, a speed sensing module, and a main
circuit control module. The power amplifier composes
of a pair of parallel connected Darlignton power
transistors for handling more armature current. The
power transistor pair is designed to be used as a
linear amplifier (common emitter configuration) for
its simplicity in contrast with the PWM design. The
dc motor is connected in series with this power
amplifier and a current sensing resistor. Hence, the
armature voltage vt(t) can be expressed as:
vt(t) = vi- Vce (t)
. dia
= L - + R ia + e a + R, ia
(15)
dt
where the Viis power supply voltage, the vce(t) is
the voltage drop across the amplifier, and the R,
times ia is the current sensing resistor's voltage
drop. It can be observed that when a speed command
from the DAC is applied to the base input of this
amplifier, the voltage vce (t) is almost linearly
adjusted which in term varies with the armature
voltage vt(t). The maximum value of the voltage drop
vt(t) occurs when the vce (t) is the minimum which
implies that the i, is equal to the full load
current. This makes the dc motor running at highest
speed. When the motor receives full-load current, the
voltage drop of the current sensing resistor is
V s = ia * R s = 3 . 4 * 0.01 = 0.034 volts
Consequently, this small voltage drop can be
neglected. The higher the vce (t) voltage is the
samller the armature voltage will be and the slower
the motor speed can be obtained. Therefore, the
motor's voltage is inverse proportional to the
Vce (t)
To use this power transistor properly, we need
to determine power losses and provide adequate
cooling to keep its junction temperature within rated
values. We consider only conduction losses [6]
including on-state losses and dynamic saturation
losses due to that, unlike pulse width modulation
(PWM) control, the turn-on and turn-off operation of '
the transistor appears only once in a complete
operation, which is at the starting and at the end of
the run. Therefore, we can ignore the switching and
off-state losses.

3 ) Current limiter: It is necessary for the speed

control loop output to be constrained by current

limits. Peak current limitation is used to limit
the surge current existing in frequent start and
stop operations. The continuous overload current
limiter is also used in the system to monitor the
armature current and to prevent any current
overshoots beyond the rated value.
4 ) Speed limiter: It limits the motor speed to a
safe value.
5 ) Reference speed update from keyboard: It allows
the user to increase and decrease the reference
speed from keyboard while the motor is running.
6) Incremental Predictor: This mode of control
preditcs changes in the speed n(k+l) in terms of
known changes in the current speed output n(k)
and vt(k)
7 ) Speed and torque Observer: It takes state
feedback and estimates the next possible speed
and torque for the motor to follow.
E) Proportional-integral(P1D) control: In a PI con
troller, the proportional control generates an
actuation signal that is proportional to the
error signal between reference and controlled
output; the integral control minimizes the steady
state error.

V. HARDWARE DEVELOPMENT
Figure 4 shows the photo of the PC-based
measurement and control system. The main modules of
the lab setup are: a dc motor ( M ) ; a current sensing,
a voltage sensing and signal conditioning modules
(C); a tacho generator (T); a power driving module
(D); and a PC with analog and digital interface card
(PC). The central processing unit of the PC is an
intel 16-bit microprocessor, which is idea for
controller and data acquisition applications due to
its vesatility and availability of tools for rapid
software development. The multifunction adapter card
include sixteen digital 110 lines, a multiplexed
10-bit AID converter, and two E-bit D/A converetrs.
The sampling signal was determined by interrupts from
a real-time clock that handled by an Intel 8059A
programmable interrupt controller resident in the PC.

DC GEUERATOR

Fig. 4 Photo of the PC-based control and measurement

system.
1832

.--

wanted to average the samples every second, but due

to the DOS time function the samples were averaged
every 990 ms. The observation was that if we
eliminated the data averaging operation and used only
the instant sampled data for the controller, then the
controller can perform 10 times better than the test
with
averaging
data
operation.
The
system's
performance can be improved even more if a separated
timer/counter chip is used to provide shorter
sampling time intervals say like one tenth of the
mechanical time constant of the dc motor.

VI. SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

The control and monitoring programs were
implemented in real-time on a PC. The C programming
language was used in order to reduce the programming
and maintenance costs of the programs. Structured
programming approach is used and any functions are
written for specific tasks. A lsit of C functions has
been developed:
controller(); performs the controller function and
output to the motor
chk-key()
; checks for keyboard input
delay()
; schedules the sample cycle
; configure the interface card
do-conf()
drawgo
; graphs the current, voltage, and power
getcurrent(); gets the present motor current
; inputs the desired RPM value
getinp()
getrpm0
; gets the present motor rpm
getvolts0 ; gets the present motor voltage
inti-scr( ) ; displays the menu/status on the screen
prog-da()
; controls the power transistor
stop-mot() ; stops the motor
to-disk()
; writes the average-array to disk
updt-scr()
; updates the latest current, rps, and
voltage displays
; control the main switch
wrt-do()
These C functions are called by the main() to perform
the following tasks associated with the real-time
measurement and control of a dc motor:
1. Initialize AID, D/A, and other devices to their
appropriate states.
2. Display a menu on the screen with a selection of
commands (SET Revolution Per Second, START
MOTOR, and STOP MOTOR), motor parameters, and
measured current, voltage, and rps
3. Accept rpn reference input from keyboard
4. Turn on magnetic switch/relay, and soft start
the dc motor
5. Read voltage, current, and rps; update the screen
6. Execute the control algorithm for maintaing the
speed
7. Read command input and response to the input
a) If STOP MOTOR command is rceived, it then
turn off the main switch, plot the waveforms
of crrent, voltage, and power values
b) If SET RPM is accepted, it then turn off the
motor and go to step 1.

CONCLUSION
A PC-based measurement and control system that
has been presented in this paper has many features
which are not available with the conventional type of
control system. The proposed system is simple and
flexible. It can incorporate a controller of the
designer's choice with a software command.
The power transfer to the motor is accomplished
with a bipolar Darlington transistor, which is
operated in its linear (ohmic) region. Since the
transistor is not operated as an on-off switch, the
switching losses of the transistor is eliminated.
Further investigations are being planned to compare
the dynamic performance of the motor controlled by
power BJTs as compared to that by power MOSFETs, and
also to establish the limitations in relation to
output power and speed of response.
REFERENCES
Muhammad Rashid, Power Electronics
Circuits,Devices, and Applications, Prentice
Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1988, pp 296-298.
Haruo Naitoh and Susumu Tadakuma,
"Microprocessor-Based Adjustable-Speed DC Motor
Drives Using Model Reference Adaptive Control,"
IEEE Trans. On Industry Applications, vol.IA-23,
no.2, March/April 1987, pp.313-318.
P. K. Nandam and P. C. Sen, "Analog and Digital
Speed Control of DC Drives Using
Proportional-Integral and Integral-Proportional
Control Techniques," IEEE Trans. on Industrial
Electronics, vol.IE-34, May 1987, pp. 227-233.
R. J. Hill and F. L. Luo, "Microprocessor-Based
Control of Steel Rolling Mill Digital DC
Drives," IEEE Tans. on Power Electronics, vol.
4, no. 2, April 1989, pp.289-297.
J. D. Meester, R. Reekmans, A. J. A. Vandenput,
R. J. M. Belmans, and W. J. D. Geysen,
"Microcomputer-Controlled Torque Calculator in
DC Drives," IEEE Trans. on Industry
Applications, vol. 25, no. 1, Jan./Feb. 1989,
pp. 113-118.
K. Ohishi, K. Ohnishi, and K. Miyachi, "Adaptive
DC Servo Drive Control Taking Force Disturbance
Suppression into Account," IEEE Trans. on
Industry Applications, vol. 24, no. 1, Jan/Feb
1988, pp. 171-176.
T. Egami, H. Morita, and T. Tsuchiya,
"Efficiency Optimized Model Reference Adaptive
Control System for a dc Motor," IEEE Trans. on
Industrial Electronics, vol. 37, no.1, Feb.
1990, pp. 28-33.
Jacob Tal, Hotion Control by Hicroprocesssors,
Galil Motion Control Inc., California, 1984.
David G. Meyer, "Annihilator Structure of a
Principal Ideal Relation to Optimal
Compensators," automatica, vol. 24, no.6, Nov.
1988, pp. 829-833.

VII. EXPERIMENTAL RESULT

The PC-based control and measurement system has
been tested with the dc motor (lOOV, 3.4 amperes)
which was mechanically coupled to a dc generator. The
output of the generator then was applied to a
variable resistor load. The resistor load was
adjusted to make different loading conditions similar
to that of the Table 1 so that the motor was always
driven under the steady state. The control program is
a menu driven program. The control laws 1 through 7
are currently used in the system for the testing.
Once it is started, a set of instructions was
dieplayed to tell the user what hielher options are.
Theme options are:
1) To stop the motor
2) To change the RPM
3) To start the motor
4) To make an emergency shutdown
After each run, the program then drawn a graph
consisting of the current, voltage, and input power.
Ae can be seen from Fig. 6, one example of these
graphs was displayed on the screen of the PC. It took
about two minutes, from start-up, for the controller
to etablize the armature current, terminal voltage,
and input power. This was due to the fact that the
disk operating system (DOS) time delay function on
the PC-XT alternately increments by 50 and 60
milliseconds. A sample was taken every 110 ms. We

1833

Fig. 5

Power, s i g n a l sensing, and conditioning c i r c u i t diagram

Fig. 6

d i s p l a y of running r e s u l t

1834