2013 International Conference on Control Communication and Computing (ICCC)
A Comparative Study on the Speed Response of
BLDC Motor Using Conventional PI Controller,
Anti-windup PI Controller and Fuzzy Controller
Arundhathi Shyam
PG scholar, School of Electrical Engineering,
VIT University - Chennai campus, Chennai, India
arundhathi.shyam2012@vit.ac.in
Abstract: - Brushless dc motors (BLDC) are widely used
for various applications because of high torque, high
speed and smaller size. This type of motors are non linear
in nature and are affected highly by the non-linearities
like load disturbance. Speed control of this motor is
traditionally handled by conventional PI and PID
controllers. This paper presents the speed control of
BLDC motor using anti wind up PI controller. Problems
like rollover can arise in conventional PI controller due
to saturation effect. In order to avoid such problems anti
wind up schemes are introduced. As the fuzzy controller
has the ability to control and as it is simple to calculate, a
fuzzy controller is also designed for speed control of
BLDC motor. The control and simulation of BLDC
motor have been done using software
MATLAB/SIMULINK. The simulation results using anti
wind up PI controller and fuzzy controller are compared
with PI controller.
Keywords BLDC, speed response, PI controller, fuzzy, anti
windup.
I. INTRODUCTION
Conventional dc machines and brushless dc machines are
more preferred for industrial purpose for the variable speed
applications. Conventional dc machines have stationary pole
structure and flux is produced by the current through that
pole structure. In brushless dc motor it has permanent
magnet. Here flux is produced by the current through the
permanent magnet. Reliable control method is required for
the BLDC drive applications. By the proper control method
only, it can overcome the nonlinearities and hence to obtain
good dynamic response. BLDC motor is a type of
permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM). In
BLDC motor back emf is trapezoidal in shape but in PMSM
machine it is sinusoidal in shape. In the BLDC motor it has
a hall sensor to sense the motor speed. This type of speed
978-1-4799-0575-1/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE
Febin Daya J L
Assistant professor (Sr), School of Electrical Engineering,
VIT University - Chennai campus, Chennai, India
febindaya.jl@vit.ac.in
control is the vector control of BLDC motor which is the
indirect vector control it uses the actual speed of the
machine to control the speed. Where as in the direct vector
control, it use the knowledge of the voltage and current for
speed control. Merits of BLDC motor are simplicity and low
cost. Responses of BLDC motor are highly influenced by
the parameter variation and load variation. Traditional
controllers are used for simple systems and it gives good
response for linear systems.
BLDC motors are nonlinear in nature. So it requires
advanced controllers like fuzzy controller and anti wind up
PI controller. Recently various control solutions are used to
improve the dynamic response are explained in [11]. Fuzzy
controller has got applications in wide range of speed
variations [1, 3, 4]. Drawbacks of normal PI controller like
rollover can be overcome by anti wind up PI controller [2,5]
In this paper it presents the speed response of BLDC
motor with different controllers like PI controller, anti
windup PI Controller and fuzzy controller. It has done for
different speed conditions and load conditions and their
comparative study. Problems that arise during conventional
PI controller are reduced by the introduction of anti windup
PI controller [2]. It is to avoid problem that arises due to the
saturation effect of normal PI controller called rollover. It
occurs due to the large value of error input to the PI
controller or if the error remains constant for a long period.
So by this anti windup PI controller we can reduce the effect
of rollover. Design of PI parameters are important, here it is
done by using Ziegler Nichols method. For the large
variations of the error fuzzy logic controllers are used.
Various steps of fuzzy logic controller are fuzzification,
inference engine and defuzzification. A fuzzy logic
controller converts numerical values to linguistic variables
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through member ship functions, fuzzy rules are used to
evaluate these functions, by the defuzzificzation process it
(10)
convert the linguistic values to the numerical values. The
aim of this paper is to show the response of the anti windup Electromagnetic torque depends on the back emf, rotor
PI controller is better for the load variation compared to the current can expressed as:
fuzzy controller but the response of the fuzzy controller is
good for the speed variation.
(11)
II. DYNAMICS OF BLDC MOTOR
Transfer function of BLDC motor can be written as:
Voltage equations of BLDC motor are given by:

(1)
(12)

(2) Where is the mechanical time constant and is the

electrical time constant
(3)
III. SPEED CONTROL OF BLDC MOTOR

Where and is the back emf which is a function of

rotor angle which is given by:

(4)

is the back emf constant. Mathematical model of BLDC

can be represented by the following equations:

Fig.1. Block diagram for speed control of BLDC motor

Since there is no saliency self inductance are independent on In the vector control of BLDC motor, actual speed of the
the rotor position: motor is sensed using hall sensors. Error speed is given to
the controller. The controller can be PI anti windup PI or
(6) fuzzy controller. In the three phase of BLDC motor only two
phases is conducting at a time. The switching sequence of
Mutual inductance can be written as:
the inverter switches determines which two phases are going
(7) to conduct. Decoder circuit used to generate the gating
signals according to the back emf and the current of the
For a balanced three phase system phase resistance are equal motor.

(8) IV. CONTROLLER

A.PI controller
Rearranging the equation (5) gives:
Transfer function of PI controller is:
(9)
(13)

Electromagnetic torque can be expressed as:

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Where is the proportional constant and is the integral arises in the conventional PI controller due to saturation
constant. This value of and is obtained by the Ziegler- effect. Saturation occurs due to constant input to the
Nichols rule. integrator or due to the large value of error input [15]. In the
anti windup PI controller input to the integrator is the
difference of the saturated output and the unsaturated input.
It produces improved performance than the normal PI
controller. Relation between and is given by the
equation (14).

(14)

Fig.2. Conventional PI controller

C. Fuzzy controller
For finding the value of constants it requires the transfer
Fuzzy controller can also be used for the speed control of
function of BLDC motor.Fig.2 shows the normal PI
BLDC motor. Fuzzy control involves fuzzification, rule base
controller. Transfer function of PI controller is given in the
and defuzzification. Fig.4 shows the fuzzy logic control
equation (13).
system. Fuzzification involves the conversion of the input
Transfer function of BLDC motor is: data values to linguistic variables. It uses membership
functions for the conversion. In the defuzzification it
converts fuzzified values to the actual output .Fuzzy rules
are given in the rule base. Fuzzy logic controller has two
input and one output. Two inputs are error in speed (e) and
Value of and are obtained using the Table. I change in error (de). Here it uses 49 rules. Linguistic
variables used are negative big, negative medium, negative
TABLE I. GAIN CONSTANTS - ZIEGLER NICHOLS RULE
small, positive big, positive medium, and positive small.
Membership functions for the inputs and output are shown
CONTROLLER
in the Fig.5, Fig.6, Fig.7 respectively [10, 12].

PI controller 0.9T/L 0.27T/

B. Anti windup PI controller

Fig.4. Fuzzy Logic System

Fig.3. Anti wind up PI controller Fig.5.Membership functions of error input

Anti windup PI controller is used to minimize the

performance degradation that occurs due to the effect of
rollover in the conventional PI controller. Value of gain
inverse of the proportional gain . Rollover is the problem

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Fig.6. Membership functions of change in error input
Fig.7. Membership functions of output function
Rules used for the fuzzy controller are if, then rules. Each
control input has seven fuzzy sets. So there are at most 49
fuzzy rules. Fuzzy rules are shown in the table II given
below.
TABLE II. FUZZY RULE BASE
condition for a reference speed of 500 rpm is shown in the
figure .9. The simulation result shows that response of fuzzy
logic control is fast compared to the PI control or anti wind
up controller. The settling time for fuzzy controller is
0.00469 seconds, but for a PI controller and anti wind up
PI controller is 0.0069 seconds and 0.0051 seconds
respectively. Results show that time taken by the fuzzy
control to settle are less compared to anti wind up PI and PI
controller. Under no load condition, over shoot is more for
normal PI controller compared to anti wind up PI and fuzzy
controller. For normal PI controller percentage overshoot is
5.26% and for anti wind up PI controller percentage
overshoot is 4.9%.Compared to these controllers fuzzy
controller has no overshoot under no load condition. Fig.10.
Shows response of machine for step increase in the speed
with a re reference speed of 500 rpm and 1000 rpm under no
load condition. Response of the machine for fuzzy controller
is fast than anti wind up PI and normal PI controller. Fig
.11.Shows the enlarged version of step changes of speed.
No load response
600

500
e/de NB NM NS Z PS PM PB
NB NB NB NB NB NM NS Z 400 Reference
PI
Speed in rpm

FLC
NM NB NB NB NM NS Z PS 300
Anti wind up PI

NS NB NB NM NS Z PS PM
200
Z NB NM NS Z PS PM PB
PS NM NS Z PS PM PB PB 100

PM NS Z PS PM PB PB PB 0
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04 0.045 0.05
Time in seconds
PB Z PS PM PB PB PB PB
Fig.9. Speed response under no load

V. SIMULATION RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 1200

Step increase in speed

1000

Reference
800 PI
FLC
Speed in rpm

Anti wind up PI
600

400

200

0
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04 0.045 0.05
Fig.8. Simulation block diagram Time in seconds

Fig .8 shows the simulation diagram of speed Fig.10. Speed response for step increase in speed
response of BLDC motor. Speed response under no load

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 Response of machine for loaded condition is shown in the Response when machine is loaded
510
fig.12.Under loaded condition, PI controller and anti wind
up PI controller respond faster than the fuzzy control for the 505

load variation. Also overshoot is more for fuzzy controller

500
than other controllers for high speed conditions under
loaded condition. Table III shows the performance 495

Speed in rpm
comparison of BLDC motor for different controller under 490
Reference
load and no load condition. In the table III settling time ts 485
Anti wind up PI
FLC
is in mile seconds and % Mp is the percentage overshoot. PI
480
Table IV shows the steady state error under loaded case.
Steady state error (Ess) is given in rpm. For fuzzy controller 475

under loaded condition steady state error is more than

470
conventional PI and anti wind up PI. 0.049 0.0491 0.0492 0.0493 0.0494 0.0495 0.0496 0.0497 0.0498 0.0499 0.05
Time in seconds
Step increase in speed
1050 Fig.13.Speed response under load condition

1040
TABLE. III. PERFORMANCE COMPARISON
1030

Anti-wind
1020 Reference
PI FUZZY
PI up PI
1010 FLC Controller
% % %
Speed in rpm

1000
Anti wind up PI
ts Mp
ts Mp
ts Mp
990
500 rpm
6.9 5.26 5.1 4.86 4.6 0
980 no load
970 500 rpm
6.7 4.9 5.7 4.87 4.2 0
960
load
1000 rpm
950 9.0 1.6 7.1 1.4 4.1 0
0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04 0.045 0.05 0.055 no load
Time in seconds

Fig.11. Speed response for step increase in speed 1000 rpm

9.0 1.54 7.7 1.3 4.3 0
load
Response when machine is loaded
600 TABLE IV.PERFORMANCE COMPARISON

500 Steady State Error (Ess)

Controller
Ant windup
Reference PI FUZZY
PI
400 PI
FLC
500 rpm
load 7 4 22
Speed in rpm

Anti wind up PI
300
1000 rpm
load 9 4.7 27
200

100 VI.CONCLUSION

This paper presents the speed control of BLDC motor using

0
0 0.005 0.01 0.015 0.02 0.025 0.03 0.035 0.04 0.045 0.05 anti wind up PI controller and fuzzy controller for three
Time in seconds
phase BLDC motor. The simulation results are compared
Fig.12. Speed response under loaded condition with PI controller results. The conventional PI controller
results are slower compared to fuzzy and anti wind up
controllers. From the simulation results, it is clear that for

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the load variation anti wind up PI controller gave better
response than conventional PI and fuzzy controller. Hence
anti wind up PI controller is found to be more suitable for
BLDC motor drive during load variation. It can also be
observed from the simulation results that performance of
fuzzy controller is better during the case of speed variation.
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