International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) - Volume4Issue4- April 2013

LabVIEW-NI ELVIS II based Speed Control of DC

Motor
S.Muruganandhan#1, G.Jayabaskaran*2, P.Bharathi#3
#
Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Kalaignar Karunanidhi Institute of Technology,
Kannampalayam post,Coimbatore-641402,Tamilnadu,India.
*
Kalaignar Karunanidhi Institute of Technology,
Kannampalayam post,Coimbatore-641402,Tamilnadu,India

Abstract—The intention of this paper is providing an efficient is more convenient and more effective than any other
and simple method for control speed of DC motor using pulse language development environment. The actual motor
width modulation technique. The modulation of pulse is obtained parameters can be modified directly, which will greatly
from the LabVIEW-NI ELVIS combination. There are several facilitate the simulation.
methods for controlling the speed of DC motors. One simple
method is to add series resistance using a rheostat. As
considerable power is consumed in the rheostat, this method is
II. SPEED CONTROL OF DC MOTOR
not economical. Another method is to use a series switch that can
be closed or opened rapidly. This type of control is termed as A. Introduction to motor
chopper control. The PWM based chopper circuit smoothly
controls the speed of general-purpose DC motors. We used the We used the PMDC motor for this study. Permanent-
LabVIEW software and NI ELVIS II DAQ card to control the magnet types have some performance advantages over direct-
duty cycle precisely. current, excited, synchronous types, and have become
predominant in fractional horsepower applications. They are
Keywords— DC Motor, Speed Control, PWM, LabVIEW, NI smaller, lighter, more efficient and reliable than other singly
ELVIS, DAQ. fed electric machines.
I. INTRODUCTION Originally, all large industrial DC motors used wound
Nowadays, AC power becomes popular and advantageous field or rotor magnets. Permanent magnets have traditionally
because of easy generation, transmission with less loss to long only been useful on small motors because it was difficult to
distances due to stepping up voltage and stepping down the find a material capable of retaining a high-strength field. Only
voltage to a desired level. In Industries 70% of the motors and recently have advances in materials technology allowed the
drives used are induction motors, hence ac motors in general creation of high-intensity permanent magnets, such as
means induction motors. Induction motors were preferred in neodymium magnets, allowing the development of compact,
industries due to the advantages of its rugged construction, high-power motors without the extra real-estate of field coils
less maintenance and can be operated in explosive and excitation means. However, as this high performance
atmospheres also. Therefore, Induction motors ruled out all permanent magnets become more applied in electric motor or
the motors in industries in every application[1]. However, DC generator systems, other problems are realized.
motors were still used for certain applications where induction
motors cannot fulfil the need. So, dc motors have its own
significance in industries. This is because some special
characteristics they possess. We used the PMDC motor for
this study.
Commonly used simulation software’s are Pspice, Protel,
and Matlab.
LabVIEW, compared with other computer softwares, there
is a particularly important difference: other computer
softwares are created based upon the language along the text
lines of code, LabVIEW graphical programming language - G
language. The resulting program is block diagram form.
LabVIEW is also a perfect simulation, debugging tools, such
as setting breakpoints, single step and so on. With LabVIEW's Figure.1 Circuit model for PM Motor
dynamic continuous tracking mode, the process of data and
changes can be continuously and dynamically observed, so it

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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) - Volume4Issue4- April 2013

the motor. So, we fabricated the chopper circuit to interface

the motor and DAQ device.
B. Speed Control
III. PULSE WIDTH MODULATION
A. Introduction to PWM

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) or pulse-duration

modulation (PDM) is a modulation technique that conforms
the width of the pulse, formally the pulse duration, based on
modulator signal information. Although this modulation
technique can be used to encode information for transmission,
its main use is to allow the control of the power supplied to
electrical devices, especially to inertial loads such as motors.
The average value of voltage (and current) fed to the load is
controlled by turning the switch between supply and load on
and off at a fast pace. The longer the switch is on compared to
the off periods, the higher the power supplied to the load is.

B. Trapezoidal Pulse width modulation

In this method, the switching pattern design should

generally satisfy two conditions: (a) The dc current Id should
Figure 2 Speed-Armature current curve of PM DC motor be continuous, and (b) the inverter PWM current should be
defined. The two conditions can be translated into a switching
1   con-strain: At any instant of time (excluding commutation
n [V  I a   Ra  Rrhe   Vbr ] intervals), there are only two switches conducting, one in the
c E g   (1) top, half of the bridge and the other in the bottom half. With
The above equation tells that the speed of a d.c. motor can be only one switch turned on, the continuity of the dc current is
controlled by changing the supply mains voltage V[2]. The lost. A very high voltage will be induced by the dc choke,
armature-circuit resistance causing damage to the switching de-vices. If more than two
  devices are on simultaneously, the PWM current Iw is not
  Ra  Rrhe  defined by the switching pattern. For instance, with S1, S2
  (2) and S3conducting at the same time, the currents in S1and S3,
Where, Rrhe is the resistance of the armature rheostat. The air which are the PWM currents in the inverter phases A and B,
gap (field)  g flux are load dependent although the sum of two currents equal to
Id.
From this it is possible to obtain the steady-state speed n of a
PM d.c. commutator motor as a function of Td for a given V,
Figure.3 shows the principle of trapezoidal pulse width
i.e
modulation (TPWM), where Vm is a trapezoidal modulating
wave, and Vcr is a triangular carrier wave. The amplitude
modulation index is defined by ma
1  Ra Rrl
n  (V  Vbr )  Td
kE k E kT (3) (4)

The existing methods for controlling the DC Motor are

1. Armature terminal voltage control Where Vm and Vcr are the peak values of the modulating and
2. Armature rheostat speed control carrier waves, respectively. Similar to the carrier based PWM
3. Shunt field control schemes for voltage source inverters, the gate signal Vg1for
4. Chopper variable speed control switch S1 is generated by comparing Vm with Vcr. However,
the trapezoidal modulation does not generate gatings in the
In this, paper concentrated on the chopper variable speed center interval of the positive half-cycle or in the negative
control via TPWM from LabVIEW. The pulse-width half-cycle of the inverter fundamental frequency. Such an
modulation technique is the commonly used method to control arrangement leads to the satisfaction of the switching
constraint for the CSI. It can be observed from the gate signals

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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) - Volume4Issue4- April 2013

a computer with programmable software. Compared to

traditional measurement systems, PC-based DAQ systems
exploit the processing power, productivity, display, and
connectivity capabilities of industry-standard computers
providing a more powerful, flexible, and cost-effective
measurement solution [4].

C. LabVIEW Program for PWM

PWM signals can be generated as a digital signal, using

counters or digital output line(s), or as an analog signal, using,
for instance, an arbitrary waveform generator or an RF signal
generator. Several National Instruments multifunction data
acquisition (DAQ) devices are capable of producing PWM
signals. The LabVIEW graphical development environment,
combined with NI-DAQmx, gives you the tools needed to
Figure 3. Trapezoidal Pulse width Modulation easily construct applications using counters to generate PWM
signals. The first step to create a PWM signal is to produce a
that only two GCTs conduct at any time, resulting in a defined simple digital pulse train. We will measure the PWM signal
Iw. The magnitude of iwis set by the dc current Id. on the oscilloscope on the NI ELVISmx Instrument Launcher.
Finally, we use the output to drive a PMDC motor.
IV. LABVIEW SIMULATION AND DATA ACQUISITION
1. In this program, Output, a pulse width modulated signal
A. Introduction to LabVIEW with varying duty cycle has been created. As per the block
diagram, first we have to create the physical channels to bring
LabVIEW (short for Laboratory Virtual out the signal. We have to Analog ports in NI ELVIS II (AO0,
Instrumentation Engineering Workbench) is a system design AO1)[6]. As per the conflict matrix, we can use both analog
platform and development environment for a visual ports simultaneously. However, we have met a problem for
programming language from National Instruments. The using both ports. For this, all the blocks are available in Data-
graphical approach also allows non-programmers to build Acquisition palette. The maximum voltage range of this
programs by dragging and dropping virtual representations of analog port is 10v. We can also use a Digital port for this
lab equipment with which they are already familiar. The operation, but the buffer size should be increased.
LabVIEW programming environment, with the included
examples and documentation, makes it simple to create small
2. And then to prohibit the automatic regeneration of data
applications [5]. This is a benefit of one side, but there is also a
while writing operation, we have to configure the task. The
certain danger of underestimating the expertise needed for
only different samples will be obtained.
high-quality G programming.

3. Then the next function called the DAQmx (Sample Clock)

B. Data Acquisition
VI to set the sample clock rate. Additionally, set the sample
mode to Continuous. It sets the source of the Sample Clock,
Data acquisition (DAQ) is the process of measuring an the rate of the Sample Clock, and the number of samples to
electrical or physical phenomenon such as voltage, current, acquire or generate. And read the actual sample clock rate
temperature, pressure, or sound with a computer. A DAQ (eventually coerced depending upon the hardware used).
system consists of sensors, DAQ measurement hardware, and

Figure 4. LabVIEW Block diagram for PWM

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International Journal of Engineering Trends and Technology (IJETT) - Volume4Issue4- April 2013

Actually, it reads the properties of reference.

5. Set the duty cycle of the motor. And compute the desired
waveform using the buffer size and update rate. This VI keeps
track of the phase of the waveform to ensure that the
generated signal is continuous. And Write the waveform to the
output buffer. And call the start VI with for loop. The while
loop will run continuously until the user presses the stop
button. Every iteration computes and writes a new waveform
to the buffer. Call the clear task VI to clear the task.9. Use the
popup dialog box to display an error or warning if any.

V. RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

The LabVIEW front panel graph shows the simulation of the Figure 7. Power vs Speed characteristics curve
program.
VI. CONCLUSIONS
The analysis with experimental results shows that motor
control established with LabVIEW can effectively control the
speed of the motor. Data-Acquisition Toolbox is used to
convert the virtual signals to physical signal. By means of
using this simulation, we can test the motor speed for different
voltages without any power loss. LabVIEW is proven to be an
excellent tool for electrical simulation.

VII. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to acknowledge and extend my heartfelt
gratitude to Professor S.Suresh and Lecturer V.Rajasekaran
for their great efforts of supervising and leading us, to
accomplish this fine work. A special thank you goes to those
who contributed to this paper: N.Gunasekaran and N.Dharsiya
rupha for their valuable comments and sharing their
Figure 5. LabVIEW Front Panel
knowledge. We thank every person gave us something to light
The different readings are taken for the different range of duty our pathway; we thank them for believing in us.
cycles. Then the graphs are plotted from the data.
REFERENCES
[1] E. Levi, “Impact of iron loss on behavior of vector
controlled induction machines,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol.
31, no. 6, pp. 1287–1296, Nov./Dec. 1995.

[2] Yunqiu. Tang, Yihuang. Zhang and Yu. Fan, Dynamic

Analysis of Alternating Current Machines. Beijing: China
Machine Press, 2004, ch. 1

[3] Jian. Chen, Mathematical Model and Speed Modulation

System of Alternating Current Machines. Beijing: National
defense industry Press, 1991, ch. 2

[4] National Instruments Corporation. Simulation Module

User Manual. April 2004 Edition. Part Number 371013A-01.

[5] Li Qianxiang, Hu Jingtao, Simulation model of

Induction motor based on LabVIEW, 2010 Third International
Figure 6. Voltage vs Speed characteristics curve
Conference on Intelligent Networks and Intelligent Systems,

Figure 7 displays voltage vs Speed characteristic's curve

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