IP Library › Granted Patent US 7,969,138
Granted Patent B2
US 7,969,138 · App. 12/869,145 · Granted Jun 28, 2011

Method for calibrating a motor control circuit to improve temperature measurement in a electrical motor

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Quick Facts
Patent No.
US 7,969,138
App. No.
12/869,145
Granted
Jun 28, 2011
Kind
B2
Abstract

A method enables measurement of an inverter loss within a motor control circuit for an appliance. The method includes applying a constant DC current generated from a first AC supply voltage to a motor winding through an inverter at a first duty cycle, measuring a first voltage corresponding to the current through the motor at a motor current sense resistor, computing a first ratio of the first measured voltage at the motor current sense resistor to a first DC input voltage corresponding to the first AC supply voltage, identifying a second duty cycle from the first computed ratio, comparing the second duty cycle to the first duty cycle, and identifying a first inverter loss factor from the difference between the first duty cycle and the second duty cycle.

Claims (19)

1. A method for enabling computation of inverter losses occurring during operation of an electrical motor comprising:

identifying a first leakage current through an inverter while the inverter is operatively coupling windings of an electrical motor to a power supply bus supplying current at a first voltage;

identifying a second leakage current through the inverter while the inverter is operatively coupling windings of the electrical motor to the power supply bus supplying current at a second voltage; and

identifying a linear relationship between the first and the second leakage currents.

2. The method of claim 1 , the identification of the first and the second leakage currents further comprising:

identifying the first and the second leakage currents with reference to a PWM duty cycle and a corrected PWM duty cycle.

3. The method of claim 1 , the identification of the first and the second leakage currents further comprising:

identifying the first and the second leakage currents with reference to a ratio between the PWM duty cycle and a corrected PWM duty cycle.

4. The method of claim 1 , the identification of the first and the second leakage currents further comprising:

identifying the first and the second leakage currents with reference to the ratio of the PWM duty cycle and the corrected PWM duty cycle and a corrected DC voltage for the power supply bus.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

identifying an operational temperature for the electrical motor with reference to the linear relationship between the first and the second leakage currents.

6. The method of claim 5 , the identification of the operational temperature further comprising:

identifying the operational temperature with reference to a resistance change in a winding of the electrical motor identified with reference to the linear relationship between the first and the second leakage currents.

7. The method of claim 6 further comprising:

identifying a voltage error correction factor for the first voltage and the second voltage supplied by the power supply bus.

8. The method of claim 7 further comprising:

identifying a voltage error correction factor with reference to a temperature of a heat sink associated with a thermistor used to identify the operational temperature.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the first voltage is a low voltage of an operational voltage range for the power supply bus and the second voltage is a high voltage on the operational voltage range.