Multi‐agent control in modular motor drives by means of gossip consensus

Abstract

A modular motor drive (MMD) can be considered as a multi‐agent system, in which the agents work together to reach a common goal. One agent in such an MMD comprises only a subset of the concentrated windings and power electronic converter modules and is equipped with an independent controller. The goal of this research is to let the agents cooperate to distribute a torque demand among them in a completely decentralised way, in order to comply with the flexibility and reliability of modular motor drives. However, the current condition of each agent must still be taken into account during this torque allocation. To limit the communication load, only communication between neighbouring agents is allowed. The combination of a gossip consensus algorithm and multiple decentralised PI current controllers is used for this purpose. Simulations and experimental results on a modular axial‐flux permanent magnet synchronous machine consisting of five agents confirm that the total torque demand is delivered under the proposed control strategy, even during agent malfunctions, under random communication link failures and with non‐identical agents.

A Gate Drive Circuit for Dual N-type H-bridge Power Transistors

“…When the simulation temperature is 27 ႏ, the current flowing through the resistance R is measured. The drawing and filling current are shown in Figure [9] . As can be seen from the figure above, the pulling current of the grid circuit of the H-bridge is 107 mA and the filling current is 124 mA.…”

Dynamic multi‐agent dc‐bus reconfiguration in modular motor drives with a stacked polyphase bridge converter

“…Although out of scope for this paper, these torque changes can be avoided by letting the agents redistribute the torque demand among the remaining active agents in a decentralised way as explained in Refs. [9,10].…”

“…The combination of a three-phase winding set, its 2L-VSI and its dedicated threephase controller in an MMD can be seen as an agent in a multi-agent system. An agent can hence be regarded as a functional entity that can operate independently from the other agents in the system, but-by allowing communication between the agents-they can also work together to reach a common goal [8][9][10].…”

“…The agents can be fed by multiple dc power sources [11], or they can be connected in series [12,13] or parallel [9,10] to a single dc power source. The specific multi-three-phase machine topology that will be studied in this paper, is the so-called stacked polyphase bridge converter [14,15], depicted in Figure 1.…”

Multi‐agent voltage balancing in modular motor drives with series‐connected power electronic converters

“…In this way, only the fundamental stator current component can be controlled [13], but the control reaches the same level of modularity as the hardware. The combination of a three‐phase winding set, a three‐phase 2L‐VSI, and a three‐phase controller is considered to be an agent in a multi‐agent system [14, 15]. Each of the $$p = n/3$$ agents (with $$n$$ a multiple of three) is capable of working independently from the other agents in the system, but by establishing a ring communication network between them, they can also work together to reach a common goal.…”