A cost effective magnetic/electronic design for the water pump application drive: Analysis, design, and experimentation

Abstract

In this paper, a thorough design for a cost effective BLDC drive in a water pump application has been performed. The novelty of this study can be interpreted in two facets. Firstly, a simple two-layer printed circuit board has been used to implement the sensor-less control of a brushless direct current machine. This new printed circuit board provides power and control voltages, thus eliminates the need for a control battery. Secondly, the brushless DC (BLDC) motor laminations have been manufactured in the same way using the same ferrite materials as existed in the conventional induction motor instead of using permanent magnet material which affects the total cost drastically. A detailed finite-element analysis has been executed through ANSOFT Maxwell's software and then an experimental verification has been carried out for the proposed drive. The overall wire to water efficiency in addition to the BLDC motor one was found to be increased simultaneously with a significant cost reduction for the proposed design.