Active Damping Control of Hybrid Stepping
Motor
Sheng-Ming Yang, Member, IEEE and Pei-Der Su
Abstract-It is well known that microstepping reduces the
resonance behavior of stepping motor since the rotor moves in a
sequence of very small steps. However, the underdamped nature
of the motor does not change. In this paper, a control scheme to
reduce the resonance of hybrid stepping motor is proposed. The
motor currents are controlled in a frame synchronously rotating
with the excitation frequency. The d-axis current provides the
torque to oppose the external load, and the q-axis current provides
the transient torque to damp the motor. The motor velocity is
estimated via an observer that tracks the angle of the motor back
emf voltage. Both simulation and experimental results have shown
that the proposed control scheme is very effective to damp out the
resonance of micro-stepping controlled motors.
Indew Terms- damping control, hybrid stepping motor, velocity
observer.
I. INTRODUCTION
Because of its high precision in positioning, stepping motor
is widely used in office and factory automation applications.
Among various types of stepping motor, hybrid stepping motor
is the most commonly used since it has the advantages of higher
efficiency and torque capability over the other stepping motors.
Hybrid stepping motor is generally operated in open loop due to
its special structure. The motor develops torque through a
mutual interaction between the electromagnetic excitation from
the stator poles and the permanent magnet flux crossing the
rotor teeth. Once a particular combination of phase currents is
established and maintained in the stator, the rotor teeth will be
attracted into an alignment with the stator poles in a particular
position. Because the viscous damping coefficient is very small
in the motor structure, application of stepping motor for quick
response is severely limited.
Although mechanical dampers [I] or passive components
such as resistance or capacitance [2] can be used to improve this
under-damped response, these schemes not only complicate the
system design but also reduce the efficiency and increase the
cost of the motor drive. On the other hand, it is well known that
microstepping reduces resonance in stepping motor since the
rotor moves in a sequence of very small steps. Nevertheless, the
under-damped nature of the motor does not change [ 11.
Closed-loop feedback control to improve the under-damped
response has been attempted in many ways. Typically, the motor
dynamics was linearized about each control instance, and then a
feedback loop was closed to drive the motor to its command
Sheng-Ming Yang and Pei-Der Su, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Tamkang University Tamshui, Taipci County, Taiwan 25 137,
Email: smyang@mail.tku.edu.tw
0-7803-7233-6/01/$10.0002001 IEEE.
position [3, 41. Since forth order models were used in these
methods, they were complex for implementation and the results
were dependent on the accuracy of motor parameters used.
More recently, several electronic control schemes were
reported to have achieved satisfactory damping control at a cost
much less than using external mechanical dampers. A scheme
that used a nonlinear microstepping waveforms in conjunction
with a positional controller was proposed in [SI. The position
control was used to prevent the dependence of closed-loop
eigenvalues on the level of external load torque. But the scheme
is suitable for low speed applications only, and a positional
sensor is required for the controller to work properly. Another
scheme involved estimation of motor torque and closing of a
torque control loop on velocity to actively damp the motor was
presented in [6]. Because the motor velocity is estimated via
integration of a signal analogous to motor torque, the
performance of this scheme is limited due to the low signal to
noise ratio.
In this paper, an alternative scheme for the damping control
of hybrid stepping motors is proposed. This scheme also uses'
microstepping for open loop position control. The motor
currents are controlled in a frame synchronously rotating with
the excitation frequency. This is quite different from the
majority of the previously proposed control schemes where the
d-q frame was aligned with the rotor position. Subsequently, the
direct axis current is setup to provide the torque required for the
external load, and the quadrature axis current is controlled to
damp the motor. The motor velocity is estimated via an observer
that tracks the angle of the motor back emf voltage.
11. MOTOR MODEL
The d-q model of a two-phase hybrid stepping motor in the
stationary frame can be written as
where p = d/dt, V,, , Vd, and i,, , id, are the winding voltages
and currents, and 0, are the rotor velocity and position,
respectively, r, L, and k, are motor parameters. Transforming
the above equation into a frame rotating synchronously with the
excitation current yields
749

where Vqe , vde and i,, , ide are the voltages and currents in
the synchronously frame, weis the excitation frequency, and Aee
is the angle between the current vector and the rotor, i.e. At& =
0, - 0,. The motor generated torque is
Te = k, [cos(de,) sin (de,)] [:r]
where k, is the torque constant. Note that because there is no
positional sensor in the motor, the frame axes of the above
model are aligned with the motor current vector and not the
rotor position. Although the rotor is rotating synchronously with
the current vector at steady state, but depending on the
magnitude and direction of the external load torque, the rotor
may be dragged behind or pushed ahead relative to the current
vector. Also as shown in Eq. (3), the motor generated torque is a
sinusoidal function ofA8, when the current vector is fixed, and a
change on A@ implies the level of external load torque has
changed.
111. CURRENT
CONTROL
A synchronous frame current regulator is used to facilitate
the microstepping of the hybrid stepping motor. PI control
action is used for both axes, and their gains are set equal for
convenience. A block diagram of the controller is shown in Fig.
1. Note that iqe* and id,‘ are the current commands, and their
values are determined by the outer control loop, i.e. damping
controller. Another input, we, is determined from the velocity
command. Also because AOe is related to the external load,
therefore cos(A0,) and sin(A8,) are treated as disturbance inputs
to the current controllers. The current responses in terms of the
reference and the disturbance inputs can be written as
-kmw,[Ls3 +(r+@)s2 +ki.s/
+ cos
4s)
and
d(s)= L2s4 + ( r . k p + L k i + k p 2 ) s 3 +(r2 + 2 r . k p +
2Lki+kp2 +L2m:)s2 + 4 r . k p . k i 2 s + k i 2
where kp and ki are the gains of the current controllers and A@)
is the characteristic equation.
,. rrip --
(3)
Ge Tx&$ t ’ ‘de
Fig. 1 Block diagram for the synchronous frame current controller
As shown in Eq. (6), the characteristic equation of the
current controller is forth order in spite of the motor model is
second order. This is because me has cross-coupled the q and the
d axis control loops when the current is controlled in the
synchronous frame. When me = 0, however, the two axes no
longer cross-coupled and the system becomes a dual second
order system. Also indicated by Eqs. (4-S), both iqe and id,
responses do not have any steady state error for step input, and
only the transient response exist when the controller is subjected
to a step input from the opposite axis or A&.
Notice the roots of the current controller vary with 0,. To
examine the influence of U, to system, the frequency response
and root loci of iqJiqe*are plotted and shown in Fig. 2 (plots for
id&* are similar and not shown). A 24 V, 1.5 Amps hybrid
stepping motor is used in the calculation, its parameters can be
found in Appendix A. The roots of both PI controllers are tuned
to approximately -2000 radsec on the real axis when we= 0. As
can be seen in Fig. ,2, the roots moved away from the real axis
noticeably when weincreased from 0 to 2000 radsec. This is not
surprising since the back emf voltage was not compensated in
the current controller. Nevertheless, this root migration has very
little influence on the damping control according to the results
that will be shown in Section VI.
IV. ACTIVEDAMPWG
CONTROL
(6) To effectively damp the motor, its generated torque must be
modulated in accordance with motor speed. It can be seen from
Eq. (3) that variation of either current magnitude or A8,can
change motor torque. However, because the rotor dynamics is
highly under-damped and the instantaneous motor position
750
information is not available, current magnitude modulation is
more suitable for torque control. In this case, either iqeor id, can
be controlled to achieve this objective. Although it is customary
in the vector control of induction motor drives that id, and iqebe
used for field and torque control, respectively [7]. In a
microstepping motor drive, however, the rotor may be dragged
rotor angle
behind or pushed ahead relative to the current vector depending
on the external load. Therefore, the roles of id, and iqein Eqs.
(2-3)are entirely different from those in the vector controlled
drives. In this paper, we propose that iqebe used for motor
torque control and ide be set to a fixed value, i.e. the rated current q axis
of the motor. The reason for this arrangement is given below.
Consider the case when iqe and ide be set to zero and a Fig. 3 Relationship between the current and the rotor vectors
constant value, respectively, then Eq. (3) becomes
Te = k, . sin( AO, ) .id, (7)
Note that 7' is approximately proportional to AO, when AO, is
small. Application of external load causes AO, to vary. But the
rotor is rotating synchronously with the current vector as long as SM

the load does not exceed the maximum torque motor can , v;.! .:lf
Y,

generate with ide Consequently, iqecan be used to provide sync.

transient torque needed to damp out resonance oscillations. A
stat.
vector diagram illustrating the relationship between the current
vector and the rotor position is shown in Fig.3. Note that
modulation of iqewill change both the magnitude and the phase
I
I I
of the current vector. However, the effect on motor torque due
to the variation of current magnitude is negligible because the .
sensitivity of AOe to iqeis much greater than the sensitivity of the T a c t ~ v edamping
I t
current magnitude to iqe.
A block diagram for the proposed damping control scheme
is shown in Fig. 4. As can be seen from the diagram, id, is set to
a fixed value, and a proportional controller is used to regulate
Fig. 4 Block diagram for the active damping control system
the error between me and the estimated motor velocity via
modulation of iqe. The unit of K, is the same as a damping
c
coefficient; increasing KO causes more damping to the motor.
Note that either proportional of proportional plus derivative
control actions can be used for the damping control. But integral
control action is not suitable for the controller since precise
motor position information is not available. Because this
scheme requires motor speed information, the method for motor
speed estimation is given in the next section. ids

v. ESTIMATION
OF MOTORVELOCITY
Many methods have been reported for the velocity
estimation of hybrid stepping motor from the back emf voltage
measurements [8-91. The scheme described in this section also
used the measured motor back emf voltages, but it is simple for
implCmentation than those previous methods. A block diagram
for the proposed velocity observer is shown in Fig. 5 . The
observer is consisted of a preprocessor that calculates the motor
back emf voltages, i.e. Vq-,,,,, and vd-em, and a feedback
controller that closed a loop on an integrator. Rearranging Eq.
( 1), Vpe,,,, and Vd-em, can be written as
Vds
Fig. 5 Block diagram for the velocity estimator
Let the estimated motor position be O r , multiplying V4.,,,,,and
vd-,,by sin(8,) and cos(8,) , respectively, and summing the
results yields the estimation error as follows
Verr = kmor
sin (Or - Or ) (9)
G (Or - O r ) when (0, - Or) is small, then
Since sin(8, - O r )
by manipulatingui, the estimation error can be forced to zero by
the feedback controller of the observer. But because V, is
proportional to m,, roots of the velocity observer vary with
motor speed. To reduce the influence of motor speed, Verris
normalized with the magnitude of the emf voltage vector. In

75 I
actual implementation, the calculated emf magnitude is limited
to a fix value at low speed to avoid division of zero.
Note that Eq. (8) is not practical for implementation since it
requires differentiation of currents. Alternative forms for p' iqs
and p . idsmust be used to avoid the differentiation. Let the
motor currents be iqs=A. cos(0J and ids=A. sin(OJ1respectively,
where A is the magnitude of the current vector. Then
p,iqs = -w,A.sin(Oe) = -U, .ids
p .ids = w,A. cos(0,) = 0, . iqs
Therefore, p . iqs and p' i , can be substituted by -0; id, and
we. iqs, respectively, in the observer.
Combining Eqs.(8- IO), the transfer function between the
estimated and the actual motor velocity can be written as
The observer has two poles and a zero. In theory, its roots
can be stabilized and placed at any desired location by proper
selection of kopand koi.Nevertheless, bandwidth of the observer
is limited by the sampling rate and motor parameters.
Fortunately, there are many high-speed microprocessors
available today that can perform all the control actions in rather
'high sampling rate. In general, accurate velocity estimation can
be obtained when the observer is performed at high sampling
rate.
VI. SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL
RESULTS
The active damping control scheme presented in the
previous sections was verified with simulations first. The motor
shown in Appendix A was used for the simulation as well as the
experimental verifications. Fig. 6 shows the simulated
responses when the motor was running at 300 Hz (6 revhec)
withoutland with the damping control. Comparing w, and Age
shown in Fig. 6 a) and b), the motor oscillated considerably
before settled down without the damping control, but the
oscillations were lowed dramatically when the damping control
was applied. Also as shown in Fig. 6b), i,, was effective only
when the motor speed was in transient state. Fig. 6 also shows
the responses when the motor was subjected to an external load
torque. It can be seen that the external load caused AOe to get
bigger, but iqeappeared only when A0, was changing. This has
confirmed that the damping control was working only when the
motor speed is different from the reference speed.
The proposed active damping control was also verified with
experiments. A TMS320C240 DSP based controller was used
to control the hybrid stepping motor in the experimental
verifications. The sampling rate for the current and the damping
control was set to approximately 5 kHz. A tachometer was
installed to measure the actual motor speed for performance
validation.
752
Fig. 7-8 show the experimental results when the motor was
running at 300 and IO Hz,respectively, withoutland with the
damping control. The responses when the motor was running at
300 Hz are similar to the simulation results shown in Fig. 6.
Without the damping control, the motor oscillated noticeably
before settled down to the target speed. But the oscillation was
damped out completely when the damping control was applied.
Notice in Fig. 7b) that iqc has a slight offset when the motor was
running at constant speed. This is because the speed observer
did not consider the actual damping of the motor. Therefore the
estimated speed has a slight error in it that caused an offset when
I , was controlled.
For the low speed results shown in Fig. 8, however, the
speed oscillations did not appeared to be caused by the
under-damp behavior of the motor since the oscillations were
cyclic and coincided with the current phase angle. It is believed
that these oscillations were due the electromagnetic
non-linearity of the motor. Consequently, the damping
controller was not able to damp out these oscillations since
linear model was used for the velocity estimation. Nevertheless,
the motor oscillated less and settled down much faster with the
damping control.
VII. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, a damping control scheme to reduce the
resonance of hybrid stepping motor is proposed. The controller
is setup such that the q-axis current is controlled to provide
damping and the d-axis current provides constant excitation to
the motor. The motor velocity is estimated via an observer that
tracks the phase angle of the motor back emf voltage. Both the
simulation and the experimental results have demonstrated that
this control scheme is very effective in providing damping to the
motor at high speeds. At low speeds, the performance is limited
due to the electromagnetic nonlinearity in the motor field. In
spite of that, the settle time at low speed was reduced
dramatically with the damping control.
APPENDIX
The motor used for the simulation and the experimental
verifications was a 24V, 1 SA, I .8", two-phase hybrid stepping
motor. The motor parameters are:
Resistance (r) 8 R
Inductance (L) 0.015 H
Emf constant (k,,,)0.01 V/(rad/s)
Torque constant (k,) 0.5 Nm/A
Viscous damping coeff. (D)0.00001 Nm/A
Motor and load inertia (4 0.000025kg.m2
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We gratefblly acknowledge the support for this research by
the National Science Council, Taiwan, R. 0. C., under grant:
NSC 90-22 13-E-032-021.
( N 3OOJ . (Nm) 005
0 0

(rr) 0.4: 'qr

0
-0.4 I

(A) 2.54
0
-2.54
5
*o(w Ihne(S@
a) Without damping control b) With damping control

Fig. 7 Experimental results when 4

'= 300Hz

J
t. 'v
(A) 0 (A) 0
7-
zH
(A) -2.54

w) 1.u
0
0 ::
(A)-2.54
2.94. "?sAi%y
iq,

0
-2.54
(A) -2.54
2.54,
0 ': T , y b \ A
0 0.05 0.1 0.15 0.2 025 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5 0 0.05 01 0 15 0.2 0.25 03 0.35 0.4 045 0.5

%a=) Ws=)

a) Without damping control b) With damping control

Fig. 8 Experimental results when 4*=
IOHz

753
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