Sensorless Control of Brushless DC Motor for More Electric Aircraft

This paper presents a summary of a university based research project sponsored by Honeywell for the development of sensorless control method for Brushless DC (BLDC) motors for industrial and aerospace applications. In particular, the development, test results and assessment of an advanced cost effective sensorless BLDC motor controller for aerospace applications are presented and discussed in detail. The motor is controlled by the method of detecting the back EMF instead of the usage of the rotor position or speed sensors. The implemented embedded controls utilize an ASIC with the main objective of enhancing reliability, fault-tolerance, power density and performance.