Three-phase ac motors have been the workhorse of industry since the earliest days of electrical engineering. They are reliable, efficient, cost-effective and need little or no maintenance. In addition, ac motors such as induction and reluctance motors need no electrical connection to the rotor, so can easily be made flameproof for use in hazardous environments such as in mines.
In order to provide proper speed control of an ac motor, it is necessary to supply the motor with a three phase supply of which both the voltage and the frequency can be varied. Such a supply will create a variable speed rotating field in the stator that will allow the rotor to rotate at the required speed with low slip. This ac motor drive can efficiently provide full torque from zero speed to full speed, can overspeed if necessary, and can, by changing phase rotation, easily provide bi-directional operation of the motor. A drive with these characteristics is known as a PWM (Pulse Width Modulated) motor drive.
Drives and motors are an integral part of industrial equipment from packaging,robotics, computer numerical control (CNC), machine tools, industrial pumps,and fans. Designing next-generation drive systems to lower operating costs requires complex control algorithms at very low latencies as well as a flexibleplatform to support changing needs and the ability to design multiple-axis systems.
Traditional drive systems based on ASICs, digital signal processors (DSPs), and microcontroller units lack the performance and flexibility to address these needs. Altera’s family of FPGAs provides a scalable platform that can be used to offload control algorithm elements in hardware. You may also integrate the whole drive system with industry-proven processor architectures while supporting multipletypes of encoders and industrial Ethernet protocols. This “drive on a chip” system reduces cost and simplifies development.