Efficient Real-Time Controller Design Test Bench for Power Converter Applications

Abstract

In order to evaluate and validate the latest trends of power-hardware-in-loop (PHIL) test setup, the dc-dc buck converter is modelled within a real-time system where the simulation model of the converter is exported to FPGA NI PXIe with a time step of 250 ns. PHIL setup allows high flexibility, the benefit of graphical programming, and advanced investigation of the control system for a converter without any safety concern and with the possibility of testing against situations that rarely occur in the field. The LabVIEW-FPGA has been used as a prototyping environment for a digital controller with the help of OPAL-RT eHS software and NI hardware. Such collaboration enables other software such as MATLAB/Simulink, Multisim, PLECS, PSIM, and LabVIEW Co-simulation for accelerating innovative research and development. This research work presents a more efficient and effectual NI PXIE platform with at least ten times more FPGA capability. This paper highlights the hardware-software toolset's performance and the proposed methodology by addressing regulation issues in dc-dc converters. For more satisfactory and reliable operation real-time simulation study of a dc-dc buck converter is evaluated at different parametric variations under the closed-loop PI controller. Finally, the executed model's effectiveness for a closed loop buck converter with real DC loads is validated through the hardware-in-loop (HIL) laboratory setup.

Model-Based Design and Experimental Validation of Control System for a Three-Level Inverter

“…[9], and Lab-VIEW NI in Ref. [10] are adopted to realize the control code. dSPACE and RT-LAB are often used in many fields, as well.…”

“…The completion of each phase is usually achieved by different engineers, in which the design documents that form this stage are isolated from each other. An error of understanding often occurs because of document communication, which results in many hidden dangers to the whole design [10,11]. After the completion of the whole design project, manual programming is used to check the error in the entire development cycle.…”

Efficient Hardware-in-the-Loop and Digital Control Techniques for Power Electronics Teaching

“…Therefore, the proposed educational laboratory as shown in Figure 1 saves time and provides flexibility for effectively designing control algorithms and implementing them in FPGA for real-time (RT) model implementation. Moreover, the same laboratory setup can be continued for research purposes such as that in [20][21][22][23], where reconfigurable power quality analyzers and enhanced Modular Multilevel Converters (MMC) with reduced number of cells and harmonic content have been proposed.…”