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Control of an Electric Drive in Simulink 
Introduction 
Simulink is a dynamic simulation environment of Matlab, in which complex 
physical systems can be modelled through differential equations and their 
behaviour can be analysed. An electric drive can also be modelled in Simulink 
through the equations governing its operation. However, as the electric drive 
consists of different subsystems, such as an electric motor, a power electronic 
converter, a mechanical load, each of these subsystems can be modelled 
separately before combining them into a single model to emulate the behaviour 
of a complete electric drive. 
Fig. 1 shows the basic structure of an electric drive. The type of the motor 
determines the configuration of the power converter, the number of sensors, 
and the control algorithm. For example, if the motor is a dc machine, then the 
power converter would be a half-bridge (two-quadrant drive) or a full H-bridge 
(four-quadrant drive), there will be one current sensor and one dc-link voltage 
sensor. The position/speed of the rotor is acquired through a shaft-mounted 
position sensor. 
 
Fig. 1 A typical electric drive 
Using the blocks and tools offered by Simulink, the physical behaviour of the 
blocks shown in Fig. 1 can be emulated. The scheme of Fig. 1 in terms of Simulink 
blocks is shown in Fig. 2. The highlighted areas represent different subsystems 
of Fig. 1. The area labelled ‘Display’ shows a scope on which different quantities 
can be plotted as a function of time to visualize the time evolution of different 
variables. The subsystems are briefly described below. 
Motor Load Power 
Converter
Control 
algorithm
User set 
points
Sensors
Conversion 
to digital 
domainControl of an Electric Drive in Simulink 
 
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Fig. 2 Simulink block diagram of a dc motor drive 
The motor 
In Fig. 2, a dc motor is shown as the actuator, but it can also be any other 
electrical machine, such as a three-phase permanent magnet synchronous 
motor. The details of the ‘Motor’ subsystem are shown in Fig. 3. As observed, 
they are the electrical and mechanical state equations of a separately excited 
constant flux dc motor. The applied armature voltage is the electrical actuation 
signal and the torque produced by the machine acts as the mechanical actuation 
signal. The load torque is shown as a separate input, which can be either a 
constant, a step function or any other load torque profile depending on the 
application being analysed. The outputs of the dc motor block are the armature 
current and the rotor mechanical position. The user can choose to have the 
mechanical speed as another output. 
The parameters of the dc motor can be set/changed by double clicking on the 
block and just inputting the new values in the dialog box. Fig. 4 shows the dialog Control of an Electric Drive in Simulink 
 
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box for the dc motor parameters. Since all the parameters shown in Fig. 4 are in 
their standard SI units, the inputs (voltage and load torque) and the outputs of 
(current and angle) of the motor block should also be interpreted in their 
standard SI units. 
 
Fig. 3 Simulink block implementation of the state equations of a constant flux dc motor 
 
Fig. 4 Parameter dialog box for a constant flux dc motor Control of an Electric Drive in Simulink 
 
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The power converter 
For a dc motor drive, the power electronic converter can consist of a half-bridge 
or a full H-bridge depending on whether the motor is required to rotate in one 
direction only (half-bridge) or in both directions (full-bridge). To preserve 
generality of the implemented drive system, a full H-bridge is simulated to give 
maximum flexibility to the user. The power converter block also includes a pulse 
width modulation (PWM) scheme that converts the duty cycles for the two legs 
of the H-bridge (da and db) into pulses of varying widths. The dc-link voltage is 
defined as a constant input decided by the user. The modulator block’s 
parameter dialog box is shown in Fig. 5, which requires the user to input the 
switching frequency in Hz. The details of the modulator block are shown in Fig. 6. 
 
Fig. 5 Parameter dialog box for the modulator 
 
Fig. 6 H-bridge modulation scheme Control of an Electric Drive in Simulink 
 
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Sensors and ADCs 
In electric drives, voltage, current and position sensors are used to measure the 
dc-link voltage, the load currents and the shaft position respectively. Since these 
quantities are in the analog domain while the control, in modern electric drives, 
is in digital domain, an analog to digital conversion is necessary. Analog to digital 
converters (ADCs) do this conversion and provide the controller with 
measurements at a fixed sampling frequency (decided by the drive designer). 
The sensors measuring the voltage and current also introduce noise on the 
measurements, which is normally a zero-mean, constant variance white noise. 
In addition to the white noise on the analog signal, the noise due to the 
quantization effect of the ADCs impacts the measurement in the digital domain 
further. All these effects are simulated inside the ‘Sensing subsystem’ of Fig. 2 
as detailed in Fig. 7. 
For the shaft position measurement, incremental or absolute position sensors 
are normally used in electric drives. The resolution of the position signal 
available to the controller depends on the number of pulses per revolution of 
the incremental encoder or the bit resolution of the absolute encoder. The fixed 
resolution of the position sensors introduces a quantization noise on the 
position signal. This quantization noise is emulated in the simulation for an 
incremental encoder. 
 
Fig. 7 Sensor subsystem structure Control of an Electric Drive in Simulink 
 
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It can be noticed from Fig. 7 that there is only one input current ia but two other 
currents ib and ic are included to allow the user to simulate a three-phase 
system. For a three-phase machine, the currents ib and ic must also be added as 
inputs to the block rather than constants as shown in Fig. 7. 
Fig. 8 shows the parameter dialog box for the sensing subsystem. The range of 
the current and voltage measurement must be set such that this range is not 
exceeded at any time. The resolution of the ADCs is usually 12-bit in commercial 
electric drives but can also be 14 to 16-bit in case of high-end drives. The pulseper-revolution
(ppr) value for incremental encoders starts from as low as 12ppr 
for very low-cost encoders and can be in excess of 10,000ppr for devices used 
for precision applications. 
 
Fig. 8 Sensor subsystem parameters 
Control algorithm 
The control algorithm for the electric drives is normally executed on a digital 
signal processor (DSP) at a fixed control execution frequency, usually at the 
switching frequency of the power converter. The control routines are normally 
written in a high-level language such as C. The block labelled ‘Control’ in Fig. 2 
emulates the behaviour of a DSP that samples the input data at a fixed frequency 
and outputs the duty cycles for the power converter after one execution cycle. 
The details of the block are shown in Fig. 9. Control of an Electric Drive in Simulink 
 
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This block consists of a Matlab s-function. S-functions (system-functions) 
provide a powerful mechanism for extending the capabilities of the Simulink 
environment. An S-function is a computer language description of a Simulink 
block written in MATLAB, C, C++, or Fortran. The block labelled ‘simple_control’ 
is like any other Simulink block but its behaviour can be fully controlled by the 
user by modifying the program that describes it. 
 
Fig. 9 Details of the block labelled ‘Control’ in Fig. 2 
In electric drives, the control algorithm is executed on a DSP that can be 
programmed in C, BASIC and assembly languages with C being the most 
commonly used language. The s-function feature of Simulink is therefore used 
to program the functionality of the block ‘simple_control’ in C. 
The program describing an s-function block must follow a certain structure and 
must contain some pre-defined functions and definitions. To program the 
s-function block properly, it is recommended to start with an example code such 
as ‘sfuntmpl_doc.c’ or ‘sfuntmpl_basic.c’ available from Matlab and modify 
according to the requirements of the application. The available templates are 
for a level 2 s-function. 
The number of inputs, outputs and parameters of the s-function block are 
defined inside the C program and they must match the inputs and outputs in Control of an Electric Drive in Simulink 
 
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Simulink. The parameters passed by Simulink to the s-function are listed in the 
dialog box of the s-function as shown in Fig. 10. In Fig. 10, the only parameter 
that Simulink passes to the s-function is Ts, the sampling time. Inside the C 
program describing the s-function, this parameter Ts is used to define the 
execution sample time of the s-function block i.e. the block is executed every Ts 
seconds. 
Since the execution time of the s-function must match the switching period of 
the power converter and the sampling frequency of the current, voltage and 
position measurements, the parameter Ts is defined as a global constant for the 
simulation. To change this parameter, go to: File->Model Properties->Model 
Properties, click on the tab Callbacks and then click InitFcn. 
 
Fig. 10 Parameter dialog box for the s-function shown in Fig. 9 
Some screenshots from the C code for the s-function ‘simple_control’ are shown 
below with a brief explanation of the functions, variables and parameters. 
S_FUNCTION_NAME: this constant defines the name of the s-function and it 
must correspond to the name of the file (without the extension .c) which is also 
used as the s-function name in the block (see Fig. 10). Control of an Electric Drive in Simulink 
 
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The header files, such as aux_funcs.h and Constants.h are user-defined .h files 
that contain definitions of functions and constants used in the code. The two 
header files are included as an example, others can be defined and included as 
necessary. 
 
Fig. 11 Code lines defining the type of the s-function, inputs, outputs and parameters 
U(element): this function macro gets a pointer to the vector of inputs from 
Simulink and allows to get the inputs to local variables. 
NUM_INPUTS, NUM_OUTPUTS, NUM_PARAMS: these must correspond to the 
inputs, outputs and parameters of the s-function block in Simulink. If these 
constants do not match the s-function block’s conditions, Matlab will generate 
an error and will not compile the code for execution. 
The parameters passed by Simulink to the function can be accessed as elements 
of the parameter array starting from 0. For example, the first parameters will be 
read in as: (mxGetPr(ssGetSFcnParam(S,0))[0]). The second parameter can be 
read in as: (mxGetPr(ssGetSFcnParam(S,0))[1]). 
The global variables should be defined outside of any functions so that they’re 
accessible to all the functions. In Fig. 11, TS, TS_INV and thm_prev are global 
variables. Variables that must hold their values between executions can be 
declared as global, although it is not strictly necessary. 
In Fig. 12, the sizes of the inputs, outputs, sample times, and other arrays are 
defined. It is important to set the number of sample times to 1 through the Control of an Electric Drive in Simulink 
 
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function ssSetNumSampleTimes(S, 1); as the s-function is intended to be a 
single-execution-rate block in our application of an electric drive. The sample 
time of the s-function is then set by calling ssSetSampleTime(S, 0, Ts); as shown 
in Fig. 13. The figure also shows the initialization conditions that the user can 
set, for example, assigning initial values to the global variables. 
 
Fig. 12 Definition of the s-function code array sizes 
 
Fig. 13 s-function sample time and initialization conditions Control of an Electric Drive in Simulink 
 
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The outputs for the model are calculated through the function mdlOutputs 
shown in Fig. 14. First, the inputs from the Simulink environment are read into 
the local variables and arrays. The calculations necessary for the control of an 
electric drive are performed on these local variables before passing the outputs 
to Simulink. This is the function where almost all of the code related to the 
drive’s control should reside. 
 
Fig. 14 Some code lines for mdlOutputs function 
To complete the process of building a Simulink block from a C program, the code 
must be compiled into a Matlab executable file. The command used for this is 
mex (that stands for Matlab executable). This command must be called in the 
Matlab command window by ensuring that the folder in which the code files are 
located is selected as the ‘current folder’ in Matlab (see Fig. 15). All the .c and .h 
files that contain the functions used inside the main file ‘simple_control.c’ 
should be within the current folder and all .c source files must be included as Control of an Electric Drive in Simulink 
 
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input arguments of the mex command as shown in Fig. 15, where aux_funcs.c is 
the second .c source file that must be compiled along with simple_control.c. 
Every time anything is changed in the code (e.g. changing a parameter in a .h file 
or adding/deleting a line in any .c file of the project), the mex command should 
be repeated before expecting a change in the behaviour of the s-function block. 
This process is similar to compiling and building the project files in a DSP code. 
 
Fig. 15 Instructions for compiling the C code into a mex file 
A C compiler will be needed to compile the code into a mex file. There are 
several compilers available from Mathworks, any of these can be used for 
compiling the code. 
Once successfully mexed, the current folder will have a mexw file with the name 
of the s-function e.g. simple_control.mexw64. This file will be accessed by 
Simulink during simulation as the contents of the S-function block shown in 
Fig. 9. Control of an Electric Drive in Simulink 
 
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The task 
Your task is to understand the model and the basic project you are provided. 
Simulate it with different conditions to enhance your understanding and be 
familiar to the model and the C code. Then, starting from the basic project as 
described above, develop the model and C code for the following objectives: 
1) Armature current control of the dc motor 
2) DC motor’s speed control 
3) Apply different load torque profiles to test your speed control 
4) DC motor’s position control (optional) 
5) A model to simulate a three-phase PMSM drive (advanced) 
6) Simulate vector control of a three-phase PMSM (advanced)