Electric vehicle is an alternative to substitute internal combustion engine when fuel availability is difficult to obtain. Electric energy can be obtained from renewable energy and non-renewable energy. Electric vehicles like electric scooters consist of many parts. The parts used in an electric scooter have requirements such as reliability, safety, good performance, and high efficiency. Brushless direct current (BLDC) motor controller is one of the main components in the electric scooter. This paper presents a design and performance test of the BLDC motor controller. The controller uses PID current control with six step commutation in a trapezoidal control. The motor current ripple is eliminated by using a digital isolator. Tests were carried out using an Eddy Current Dynamometer. The results show that the current ripple is sucessfuly reduced which makes the controller suitable for electric scooter applications.
Overheating is a failure mode that significantly affects the reliability of electronic devices. All electronic devices, including a 3-phase inverter driving a traction motor, produce heat dissipation. Heat dissipation needs to be controlled with cooling to prevent overheating. Overheating can be avoided by increasing cooling or reducing heat dissipation. Heat dissipation in the 3-phase inverter is caused by the internal resistance of the metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET), switching loss, and other factors. Cooling for the 3-phase inverter can use water coolant or air coolant. The cooling system is based on the amount of heat dissipation produced. Cooling of a 3-phase inverter can use air coolant with the addition of an extended surface area in the heat sink. The heat sink uses aluminum material, often called pin fin. There are kinds of aluminum available in the market. We calculated heat generation based on the MOSFET's internal resistance, switching loss, and other factors. We validated the simulation results experimentally using a thermal camera. Thus, we could find an optimal number, dimensions, and aluminum type of fin for the cooling system in the 3-phase inverter.
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