MATLAB-based Simulation of Three-level PWM
Inverter-fed Motor Speed Control System
Xiaorong Xie, Qiang Song, Gangui Yan, Wenhua Liu
Department of Electrical Engineering
Tsinghua University
Beijing 100084, P.R. China
Abstract—The need for energy savings and introduction of new
high power devices like IGCTs accelerate the broad use of
medium and high voltage adjustable speed drives (ASD) in
industrial and traction applications. As part of the mission to
design a 6kV, 1600kVA three-level converter–based ASD, a
simulation system is developed using MATLAB package for the
purpose of validating the practical power electronic circuits and
offering suggestions for controller design. In the paper, various
aspects of the proposed simulation system are discussed, including
the Simulink modeling of the power electronic circuit, control
mechanism of the simulation and the friendly graphic user
interface (GUI). Some key issues in improving simulation
efficiency are also highlighted. For illustration, two control
schemes, the conventional V/F control and the Direct Torque
Control (DTC), are investigated. The starting process of the
controlled motor system is simulated. Results demonstrate the
effectiveness of the developed simulation system and also the
superiority of DTC over open-loop V/F control in speed regulation
and torque response.
Keywords-Adjustable Speed Drive, Direct Torque Control (DTC),
Integrated Gate-Commutated Thyristor (IGCT), MATLAB, Pulse
Width Modulation (PWM), Simulink, Three-Level Converter,
Voltage Sourced Inverter (VSI)
I. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, energy savings become a significant issue, which
attracts a lot of interests from academe and industries. In China,
especially with its power industry moving to the market
mechanism, power generation corporations become more and
more concerned about reducing plant loads and thus elevating
generation efficiency, which in turn determines their
competitiveness in the power market. Since the majority of plant
loads are pumps and fans operated with fixed speed drive, one of
the most effective measures to save energy is to replace them
with adjustable speed drives (ASD). This trend is quickened up
by the rapid progress of power electronics, especially the
emergence of high power semiconductors such as
Gate-Turn-Off thyristor (GTO), high voltage IGBT, Integrated
Gate-Commutated Thyristor (IGCT) and so on. In recent years,
much effort has been devoted to R&D of medium/high-voltage
(kilovolt and above) and large-capability ASD [1]-[3]. The work
of this paper is part of our mission to design a system of this kind
0-7803-7768-0/03/$17.00 (C) 2003 IEEE
with the rating of 6 kV and 1600 kVA, based on a three-level
voltage-sourced inverter (VSI) using IGCTs.
It is widely acknowledged that computer simulation plays
very important roles in research and development of power
electronic devices because of its high maneuverability, low cost
and ability to speed up system implementation. The objective of
our work included in this paper is to simulate precisely the
above-mentioned ASD system and thereby to verify the validity
of the designed electrical circuit and digital controllers based on
the well-known MATLAB software package.
The paper is organized as follows. In the following section,
we have a brief look at the IGCT-based ASD system with focus
on its circuit topology. Section III presents how the simulation
system is designed, including its various aspects such as
modeling, control and interface. In section IV, as case study, two
control schemes are investigated. One is the conventional
constant volt per hertz principle (also known as V/F control)
incorporating the selective harmonic elimination (SHE) PWM
technique. The other is the Direct Torque Control (DTC). Some
comments on the proposed simulation system are made finally.
II. POWER ELECTRONIC CIRCUIT
Fig. 1 illustrates the power electronic circuit of the
adjustable-speed AC motor drive system, which comprises
following parts:
• The input isolation transformer, which is connected to
the AC transmission through the main breaker.
• A conventional diode rectifier in a 24-pulse series
arrangement, which can keep the harmonics of the line
side below the IEEE 519-1992 limits.
• Electronic switches (SD1 and SD2), each consisting of
two protection IGCTs in series connection. They are
used to disconnect the rectifier from the DC link
immediately in case of inverter failures.
• The common mode circuit to protect the motor against
common mode voltages.
• DC-Link with the di/dt-choke.
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 Figure 1. Power electronic circuit

• The voltage-sourced inverter, which is based on the
three-level, also known as the Neutral-Point Clamped
(NPC) configuration. A total of 24 IGCTs
(5SHX08F4502, 4500V/630A) are employed to build
up the inverter. In rated operation condition, the voltage
of the DC link is as high as 10 kV. With short time
over-voltage considered, the value may be even higher.
Therefore, two IGCTs with the rated voltage of 4500V
are used in series connection to function as one
switching device.
• The output LC filter, for the purpose of supplying the
motor with sinusoidal voltage.
creating or editing control data, starting or stopping simulation
and viewing or print simulation results.
A. Simulink Model
This model, developed in Simulink CAD environment, is
represented as a ".mdl" file, which can be loaded by other
programs or even from the MATLAB command window. It
contains 5 sub-systems (see Fig. 3): DC-Link with auxiliary
circuits, three-level inverter, LC output filter, the induction
motor (as the load) and the controller.

III. THE SIMULATION SYSTEM

The developed simulation system is based on the
well-known MATLAB, which is selected as the underlying
environment because of its various unique advantages [5]: high
programming efficiency, strong numerical algorithm support,
convenient Simulink CAD environment, Power System Figure 2. Hierarchical structure of the simulation system
Blockset (PSB) offering models of many power electronic
devices, elegant graphical user interface, and most of all, its
open architecture making it possible to customize, expand and
integrate complicated system model and control scheme to meet
special requirements.
The hierarchical structure of the simulation system is
illustrated in Fig. 2. The base module is the "Simulink Model"
of the ASD system. Upon that is the "Simulation Control Block",
which comprises two parallel components: the "Control Data",
which serves as the container of various data in the simulation,
and the "Control Program", which is a set of routine
implementing the simulation predefined by the "Control Data".
The top layer is the Graphic User Interface (GUI), with which
the user can fulfill the whole process of simulation, including Figure 3. Simulink model of the ASD system

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 MATLAB PSB does not provide the model of IGCT.
Considering the fact that IGCT is an improved version of GTO
[4], we build the three-level inverter by using GTOs with
appropriate adjustment of model parameters. Although the
inverter can be configured with separate power electronic
devices (GTO, diode), a special PSB model, called the
"Universal Bridge (UB)", is employed as the basic component
instead. The reason is that in Simulink UB can be discretized to
be used in a discrete time step simulation while discretization of
Universal
a converter built with individual forced-commutated power
Bridge
units (GTOs, MOSFETs, IGBTs) is not available. And as will
be mentioned later, discretizing the system model is one of the
Figure 4. Simulink model of the three-level inverter using Universial Bridge
key techniques to improve simulation performance. An UB
implements a universal three-phase bridge converter with
selectable configuration, power switch type and snubber
parameters. By setting the UB's “bridge number” to 1, “port
configuration” to “ABC as output terminals ” and “power
electronics” to “GTO/Diode”, we get a standard unit and use it
as the basic unit, aided by NPC-diodes, to construct the inverter
(see Fig. 4).
In the developed simulation system, the controller is
actually an application program written with MATLAB
language. Based on input signals, including measurements
Ms1-4 and the simulation time from the "Clock" model, the
controller exports two groups of control signals, Con1 and Con2.
Con1 is applied to the DC Link to turn on/off the main breaker
and the protection IGCTs. Con2 is to electronically switch the
GTOs of the three-level inverter to make the inverter produce
voltage of required frequency and amplitude. The gating signals
in Con2 are generated according to the specific control scheme
used, such as constant V/F control and DTC.

B. Simulation Control Block
MATLAB/Simulink offers a general simulation
environment. However, it has various drawbacks, for instance,
the complicated manipulation, lack of a unified interface to
handle simulation parameters and results. Most importantly, it
suffers a dilemma between simulation speed and time-span in
simulating large and complicated systems. With the simulation
going on, the volume of stored data steadily increases, which in
turn decelerates the simulation. If the simulation time is so long
that the computer's memory will be exhausted and too frequent
hard-disk handling could even make further simulation
infeasible. To overcome these problems, we designed the
Simulation Control Block, which consists of two parallel parts:
"Control Data" and "Control Program". "Control Data" are
stored in a ".mat" file in the form of "structure", which includes
all the data required and resulted in one simulation. "Control
Program" is a set of routine to be initiated from GUI, which
executes the whole process of simulations in the way as
predefined in "Control Data."
Figure 5. Graphical User Interface of the simulation system
D. Flow of simulation
Fig. 6 illustrates the general flow of using the developed
simulation system to simulate the variable-speed drive system.
E. Key techniques to improve simulation speed
1) Discretizing the system: The power electronic devises
and the induction motor are discretized with Tustin method and
Forward Euler method respectively. Meanwhile, digital
controller is designed. Therefore, we get a completely discrete
Simulink Model. The simulation accuracy is guaranteed by
appropriately selecting the step-time. A lot of simulation tests
conclude that a step time of 10-6 second well balances
simulation speed and accuracy.

C. Graphical User Interface (GUI)

The GUI provides a user-friendly access to using the
developed simulation system. The main window is displayed in
Fig. 6. Initiated from MATLAB command window, the GUI
handles the whole process of simulation, from creating new
simulation model, starting simulation to analyzing the result.
Figure 6. Simulation Flow

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 2) Segmenting the simulation: To harmonize the harmonics are effectively eliminated thanks to the SHE PWM
contradiction between simulation speed and time-span, the approach (see Fig. 9). Further, with the LC output filter, most of
segmentation method is adopted, which involves following the high-order harmonics are restrained and the voltage applied
steps: Firstly, the whole time period is divided into several to the induction motor is of nearly ideal sine waveform.
short-time pieces, the length of which is determined by the It is obvious that the V/F control has inferior response in
performance of the computer used. Then each piece is torque and speed. To improve the dynamics performances of the
simulated with the initial state values coming from the final ASD system, we implement a DTC scheme based on the
state values of the last piece (for the first piece, the initial approach proposed in [7]. Its brief principle is illustrated in Fig.
values are from the Control Data) and the results of this piece 10. Two Estimators, the "Speed Estimator" and the "Flux and
are stored in a temporary file. After all the pieces of simulation Torque Estimator", calculate the rotor speed, stator flux and
electromagnetic torque from the measurements (including stator
are completed, the temporary results are combined to form the voltages and currents) according to the mathematical model of
ultimate simulation results. the induction motor. The "PI-Type Speed Regulator" then
3) Minimizing the number of measurements and display generates the reference value of electromagnetic torque using
blocks. the speed difference. The errors of flux and torque are inputted
4) Other techniques: clearing obsolete variables in the to the "Vector Selection Algorithm", which employs the
workspace, adopting "Single Tasking Mode" and etc. "Vector Selection Table" to select appropriate voltage vectors
and thus implement specific PWM pattern in the three-level
IV. CASE STUDY converter.
Two case studies are conducted to test the effectiveness of
the developed simulation system and at the same time to offer
suggestions for designing practical controller for the physical
ASD system. In the first case, we develop a digital controller of
the conventional constant volts per hertz principle, which offers
an open-loop and crude speed control. In the second case, a
DTC scheme is implemented. With both of the control methods,
the starting processes of the ASD system, from its standstill
status to the rated operation condition, is simulated and the
corresponding results are presented.
In our case studies, the model parameters of the induction
motor come from the nameplate of the real motor used in the
field test. They are listed as follows: Pn = 320kW, Vn = 6kV, fn =
50Hz, Lm = 0.794H, Rs = 0.670Ω, L1s = 0.037H, Rr' = 1.388Ω,
Lr' = 0.043H, J (Inertia) = 5Kg.m2, F (Friction factor) = 1N.m.s,
p = 4. The load of the motor has a torque-speed characteristic as
Tm = 0.6605ω 2 N.m.
In power plants, the drives such as fans and pumps have
Figure 7. Motor speed in the starting process with V/F control
relatively low requirements for speed regulation accuracy. So
the conventional V/F control [6], aided by an external
close-loop control (e.g. the air pressure feedback control), can
achieve quite satisfied performance. To alleviate the
unfavorable influence of harmonics on the induction motor, the
Selective Harmonic Elimination (SHE) PWM technique is
adopted. Based on this V/F control and SHE PWM, the staring
process is simulated with the proposed simulation system. Fig. 7
shows the dynamic curve of the motor speed. Fig. 8 and 9
display the output line-to-line voltage of the inverter and its
Flourier analysis results when the motor operates in the rated
condition with f = 50Hz.
In the V/F control, the frequency of the inverter’s output
voltage is increased slowly step by step from the minimum
value, 1Hz, to the rated value, 50Hz. From Fig. 7, we can see
that the motor speed increase in phase with the given frequency.
The whole starting process lasts for 13 seconds and more than
240MB data are saved, which can hardly be fulfilled in the
original Simulink environment. With the motor working in the
rated condition, the voltage output of the three-level inverter has Figure 8. Line-to-line Voltage when f=50 Hz
a multiple-pulse waveform (see Fig. 8), whose low-order

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 Figure 9. Flourier analysis of the line-to-line voltage when f=50 Hz
The responses of rotor speed and electromagnetic torque of
the ASD system controlled by DTC are displayed in Fig. 11 and
12. From the simulation results, It can be safely concluded that
DTC achieves much better performance over the open-loop V/F
control. However, DTC is generally more complicated in theory
and more difficult in practical implementation.
Figure 10. Scheme of the Direct Torque Controller
Figure 11. Motor speed in the starting process with DTC
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Figure 12. Motor’s electromagnetic torque in the starting process with DTC
V. CONCLUSIONS
This paper present a simulation system based on MATLAB
to customize simulating medium voltage ASD system with
24-pulse rectifier and three-level VSI configuration. Some
unique characteristics of the proposed simulation system are as
follows:
• It has a hierarchical structure. The graphical user
interface, simulation control block and Simulink model,
each handling different aspect of the developed
simulation system, combine to form a flexible and
integrated simulation environment.
• IGCT, the key power semiconductor in the ASD, can be
well simulated using PSB's GTO model with
appropriately modified parameters. The three-level
converter is built up with the model of "Universal
Bridge", which make it possible to discretize the system
for fast simulation.
• By employing some key techniques, such as system
discretization, simulation segmentation, the obtained
platform well balances simulation speed and time-span
and thus has satisfied efficiency.
• As case study, two control schemes have been
investigated in the simulation system, the conventional
V/F control and the advanced DTC. The former offers a
simple and crude option while the latter enables the
ASD system to own superior performance in speed
regulation and torque response.
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