A Novel Experimental Method for Identifying the Flux Linkage Map of a High-Power Medium-Voltage Electrically Excited Synchronous Machine with Double Stator Winding

Accurate knowledge of the magnitude and position of the magnetic flux is essential for implementing field-oriented control (FOC) and achieving high-performance behaviour of AC drives. For estimating the flux in a wide range of speeds, so-called hybrid flux estimators, which are a combination of current-model and voltage-model based estimators, are usually used. Since the inductances are used as parameters in the current model, knowledge of the actual flux–current relationship, i.e., of the actual flux linkage map, is inevitable. In this paper, a novel experimental method for identifying the flux linkage map of an electrically excited synchronous machine (EESM) with double stator winding is proposed, which, unlike most existing experimental methods, does not require an additional machine to be used as a load. The flux is determined for different operating points to which the unloaded and sped-up machine is brought to by injecting d- and q-axis stator current components, whereby the current controllers are used to keep them constant for a certain operating point. The proposed method has been used to identify the flux linkage map of a medium-voltage EESM with double stator winding. A more than acceptable accuracy confirmed by comparison with three different analytical methods, together with the fact that it does not require a complex experimental setup, makes the proposed method suitable for the identification of a machine’s flux linkage map in an industrial environment.