FPGA-Based Detailed Real-Time Simulation of Power Converters and Electric Machines for EV HIL Applications

Real-time (RT) simulation plays a fundamental role in the design and validation of hardware and software for power electronic converters and electric drives. In this paper, a field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based RT platform for simulation of power converters and electric machines is presented. Strategies for modeling power electronic devices are explained and compared. In addition, a Thevenin-based equivalent model of a switch is enhanced to model the on characteristics of these devices. This motivates the design of an electrothermal algorithm for FPGA implementation. With respect to electric machines, different methods for modeling of the saturation characteristics are evaluated for their use in RT simulation. A procedure to efficiently compute the saturation characteristics is proposed. Finally, a hardware-in-the-loop model of an electric vehicle drive is used to illustrate the machine saturation.