Design and Simulation of Z-Source Inverter Fed Brushless DC Motor Drive Supplied With Fuel Cell for Automotive Applications

Abstract

This paper presents design and simulation of Z-source inverter fed brushless DC motor drive supplied with fuel cell for automotive applications. The brushless DC (BLDC) motor are used due to many advantages such as high efficiency, high torque, high reliability, high-power density, lower maintenance compared to other motors in electric transport applications. The BLDC motor drive is with voltage source inverter (VSI) or current source inverter (CSI) because of low efficiency, high thermal loss, and inductor and capacitor large values inherently unreliable. Also shoot-through in DC bus in VSI and open circuit in DC link in CSI causes damage to the power source connected to the inverter, such as fuel cells, solar cells or the battery. In VSI and CSI are for increasing and decreasing the output voltage needs to separate DC-DC Buck and Boost converter. But their disadvantages have been overcome in the Z-source inverter using two inductors and capacitors. Also the Z-source inverter has inherent protection against shoot-through in the DC bus and boost voltage ability. In this paper the BLDC motor drive supplied to the fuel cell via a Z-source inverter are  designed and evaluated. The simulation results show that the output voltage of fuel cell less can be settled in desired zone with changing capacitors and inductors and operating duty cycle.