Electric Vehicle BLDC Motor Driver

The motor drive system is to be used in two different vehicles in an efficiency competition called the Shell Eco Marathon. The two vehicles, a 1600W urban concept vehicle, and a 500W prototype vehicle are designed and built by Oregon State University students in the ASME club. A single PCB is used for both motor packages with only minor modifications needed during assembly to differentiate between the two. A Field Oriented Control (FOC) scheme used. One motor is sensored (500W), the other is sensorless (1600W). Both motors operate on a 13s Li-Po battery (48V nom). For both motors, the FOC control uses a sensorless approach to allow for compatibility under the same PCB. Additional I/O are available for use with sensored systems as well but not implemented in the firmware design. The system sends telemetry including voltage, current, power, and RPM to peripheral devices via an automotive standard CAN bus. Intra-circuit communication is performed via SPI, while programming is via an isolated USB-UART interface that includes JTAG debugger capabilities. Unfortunately, our team was unable to produce a working finished project. Difficulty receiving adequate technical support from the manufacturer of the microcontroller lead to significant challenges developing a working firmware. The libraries adopted from that manufacturer and IDE required for firmware development proved difficult to use and navigate. We were able to successfully integrate the CAN controller into a working project firmware and can broadcast CAN packets. Further development with the MCP2515 CAN controller is needed to receive data from the CAN bus.

2 Lifts 

Artifacts

Name Description
Project Artifacts A folder that includes the executive summary, Project Summary video, and project closeout documents.   Link