Simulation and Analysis of a Resolver for HEV Electric Drive Application

Resolvers as position and speed sensors are widely used in many areas including the automotive industry, especially in the application of an electric drive for a hybrid electric vehicle. One of the disadvantages of using resolvers is that their complexity usually leads to quality issues during development that requires engineering resources and time to solve, which could be better served in solving the complex system issues of improving the hybrid system functionality. This paper describes the creation of a full resolver system simulation that can be used to prevent development issues, improve the hybrid system DFMEA, and act as a catalyst for solving development issues when they do happen. The system simulation model utilizes an integrated systematic approach using co-simulation between several commercial simulation tools to simulate the resolver's electromagnetic characteristics using a transient solver of finite element method, the excitation and termination circuits using an electric/electronic circuit simulator, and the behavior model of a Type II tracking closed loop algorithm to simulate the dynamics of the R/D IC using MATLAB SIMULINK™ The simulation model is verified with test results and then used to predict the behavior during failure modes.