IJSART - Volume 4 Issue 4 – APRIL 2018 ISSN [ONLINE]: 2395-1052

Design of Electronic Speed controller of Brushless DC

Motor
Vaishali Kurlakar1, Onkar Chichkar2, Nikita Gotmare3, Siddhesh Khedekar4
1, 2, 3 ,4
Dept of electrical engineering
1, 2, 3 ,4
AISSMS IOIT,Kennedy road, Pune-411001

Abstract- This paper discusses the construction and across the motor can be controlled and hence the speed of
working principle of Brushless DC motor. The speed the motor.
control of the BLDC motor can be done using PWM
technique. The block diagram for speed control of BLDC II. CONSTRUCTION AND WORKING OF BLDC
motor is explained in this paper. A circuit design is MOTOR
proposed which contains arduino/controller, optocoupler,
MOSFET inverter bridge. Six step control of BLDC motor CONSTRUCTION
using bridge inverter is simulated in Multisim.
The construction of BLDC Motor is explained below
Keywords- BLDC, Electronic Speed Controller, PWM,
Optocoupler, MOSFET, Multisim  STATOR – The stator of BLDC Motor is similar
to that of induction motor. It is made of stacked
I. INTRODUCTION steel lamination with windings which are placed in
the slots. The windings are wound such that
Drive systems are widely used in large number of various number of phases are formed. As the
industrial and domestic applications. Among various types number of phases increases the percentage of
of drives electric drives are undergoing technological ripple present in the torque decreases.[5]
advances. BLDC motor is one of the recent advancement
which is gaining popularity in wide range of applications.  ROTOR – The material used for the construction
The major advantage of BLDC motor over DC motor is its of BLDC Motor is permanent magnet. The
commutation technique. Conventional DC motor consists of magnet is arranged such that it forms pole pair
commutator and brushes. However due to frictional losses that alternate between north and south pole.[1]
at the brush-commutator surface, heat is generated, hence it
is major drawback. In BLDC motor commutation is done
electronically and as brushes are absent there is no scope of
sparking and heat generation. Thus BLDC motors are more
efficient and have noiseless operation.

BLDC motor has different construction than other

conventional motors. The rotor is made up of permanent
magnet and surrounds the stator which has windings.

In almost every motor driven application, speed

control of motor is vital part of the design of that drive.
Speed control of BLDC motor is dependent on electronic
commutation circuit. It consists of microcontroller, driver
circuit and feedback taken position sensors of motor. This
speed control can be performed using various techniques. Fig 1: Constructional details
[4]
Simulation of BLDC motor using six step control is WORKING
performed. In simulation results, the speed and torque
characteristics of motor with respect to time are observed. The working principle of BLDC is attraction and
By changing the duty cycle of PWM signal the voltage repulsion between magnetic poles. The diagram shown
below explains the operation of 3 phase motor. When one

Page | 931 www.ijsart.com

IJSART - Volume 4 Issue 4 – APRIL 2018 ISSN [ONLINE]: 2395-1052

of the phase is energized it generates a electromagnetic pole software. It reads the feedback from the BLDC
and attracts the nearest permanent magnet of opposite pole motor and generates the required PWM signal.
present in the rotor. Energizing the stator phases in  Driver Circuit: It consists of an optocoupler.
particular sequence, will cause the rotation of rotor. The Optocoupler is used for amplifying the signal
direction of rotation depends on the sequence of generated by the PWM pins. Optocoupler gives the
energisation of phases. This energisation process is done by electrical isolation between motor and controller
using the PWM pins of microcontroller. Driver circuit is circuitry due to which the electronic circuit is
placed in between motor and microcontroller for amplifying protected from the transient currents drawn by the
the signal generated from PWM pins of microcontroller.[1] motor.
 MOSFET bridge inverter: It is used for energizing
Speed of the motor can be controlled by adjusting the motor phases in required sequence. By
the duty cycle of the PWM signals. If the time for which changing the triggering sequence of the
one phase is energized is varied the speed of the motor will MOSFETS in appropriate manner the direction of
also vary. The motor is also dependent on supply rotation as well as speed of the motor can be
voltage.But in this method, input voltage to the motor is varied.
kept constant.
IV. CIRCUIT DIAGRAM OF ELECTRONIC SPEED
Speed control is of two types, one is sensored CONTROLLER
control and other is sensorless control. In case of sensored
control, hall sensors are used which determine the position
of the rotor. And then this sensed position of rotor is given
as a feedback to the microcontroller. Then PWM signal is
generated based on this feedback signal. In case of
sensorless control, Back EMF of the stator windings is
taken as a feedback.[2]

III. BLOCK DIAGRAM FOR SPEED CONTROL OF

BLDC MOTOR

The electronic control circuit used for controlling

the speed of BLDC motor consists of
microcontroller/arduino, driver and MOSFET bridge Fig 4: Circuit Diagram of electronic speed controller of
inverter circuit.[2][3] BLDC motor

 Arduino/controller: It is an open source electronic The circuit used for the design of controller is drawn using
platform based on easy to use hardware and Multisim software.
 Qx: MOSFET
 Ux: Opto-coupler  M1: BLDC Motor
 CLx: Clock Pulses  VCC: DC supply voltage
 XSC1: Oscilloscope

Fig 3: Block diagram of electronic speed controller

Page | 932 www.ijsart.com
IJSART - Volume 4 Issue 4 – APRIL 2018 ISSN [ONLINE]: 2395-1052

Instead of PWM pins of micro-controller, the clock

pulses are shown for controlling the speed of the BLDC
motor. As signal coming from PWM pins/clock pulses is of
very low value. It is not sufficient to trigger the MOSFETs.
Driver circuit helps to amplify the PWM signal. Optocouplers
are used in driver circuit. Optocouplers provides electrical
isolation which prevents microcontroller/arduino from
drawing excess current from motor. MOSFET bridge inverter
gives the six step control for BLDC motor.

Channel A of oscilloscope is connected to the shaft of

the motor and the speed characteristics are observed. Channel
B is used for observing the motor torque characteristics.

V.SIMULATION RESULTS

The circuit used for the design of six step control of

BLDC motor is simulated in Multisim software, the speed and REFERENCES
torque of the motor is observed for a particular period of time.
[1] Jian Zhao, Yangwei Yu, “AN047 Brushless DC Motor
Fundamentals”, July 2011, Microchip Technology Inc.
[2] Padmaraja Yedmale, “AN899 Brushless DC Motor
Control Using PIC18FXX31 MCUs”, 2004, Microchip
Technology Inc.
[3] Padmaraja Yedmale, “AN885 Brushless DC (BLDC)
Motor Fundamentals”, 2003, Microchip Technology Inc.
[4] Version 2 EE IIT, Kharagpur, “ Lesson 35, Electrical
actuators: BLDC Motor Drives”
[5] James R. Hendershot, “BLDC Motor phase, pole and slot
Fig 5: Six step control for brushless DC motor configuration”, Magna Physics Corporation, Hillsboro,
Ohio.
VI. CONCLUSION

In this paper, three phase BLDC motor is studied

which requires electronic commutation circuit. Internal circuit
diagram of this electronic controller is designed using
microcontroller, opto-coupler and MOSFETs. The six step
control of BLDC motor using positioning sensor feedback is
simulated in Multisim software. Speed and Torque
characteristics with respect to time are shown in simulation
results. Circuit designed for speed control gives satisfactory
results. Hence design can be implemented practically.

Page | 933 www.ijsart.com