Toward an optimal twisting-sliding mode control of a three-phase PMSM for electric vehicles

This paper deals with an optimal twisting sliding mode controller (OT-SMC) for the operation of a three phase permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM) in an electric vehicle (EV). In order to drive these vehicles, optimal performance is needed with robust control against real-time disturbances such as the variable load torque, uncertainties such as the parameters variation and speed variations between medium, low, and high speed as well as good performance characteristics for enhanced drive quality and longer battery time. Several conventional techniques have been applied to PMSM but they suffer from the problem of uncertainties and disturbances due to the PI regulator. A hybrid approach comprising of a robust nonlinear and optimal controller to achieve these objectives is attempted for driving electrical vehicles. This advanced hybrid controller obtained after the merger of sliding mode control (SMC) and a linear quadratic controller (LQR) is found to outperform existing controllers due to their superb performance characteristics. Furthermore, SMC is designed based on the exponential reaching law for the twisting sliding mode control (T-SMC) in order to ensure stability of the system while reducing the chattering, accelerating the rate of convergence with higher accuracy of the control performance, and the LQR is developed using the steady-state error method (N-LQR) in order to obtaining better performance characteristics. In addition, the hybridization between a twisting SMC and an optimal LQR is characterized by stabilizing and minimizing the oscillations in the permanent regime thus optimizing the system’s performance. Extensive simulation results illustrate the effectiveness and validity of the proposed control for achieving the highest performance of the PMSM.