Direct instantaneous torque control of Brushless DC motor using firefly Algorithm based fractional order PID controller

Abstract In this paper, a Firefly Algorithm (FA) based Fractional Order PID (FOPID) Controller is proposed for Brushless DC (BLDC) motor to achieve an effective control of torque and speed. In a conventional control of BLDC motors, the torque references are converted into current references and phase currents are controlled using current controllers. This indirect way of controlling torque is not effective and results in a ripple in the torque. This paper proposes a direct instantaneous scheme in which reference torques are compared with estimated torques directly and the error is given to FOPID controller. The FOPID torque controller controls the motor torque effectively with a very low ripple. Here, FA technique is used to tune the FOPID parameters. Simulation results are verified in Matlab/Simulink environment and also the effectiveness of proposed FOPID controller is compared with GA based FOPID controller.