Development of a Class D motor amplifier for a next-generation mechanism control electronics

Sammanfattning: This thesis was written at Airbus DS GmbH in Friedrichshafen, Germany, as part of a project which aims to develop a new generation of class-D power amplification circuits for sinusoidal commutating motors controlling the movement of different mechanisms in satellites. Currently used topologies have disadvantages such as high power loss, analog controlling and high degree of signal distortion. This work first simulates available topologies which were previously developed by the company in order to compare them and build a trade-off list so the most suitable circuit is selected. Then, by further simulating and analysis several improvements to the circuit are suggested and a final schematic is developed including an analogue-to-digital converter and a total of three phases to power a motor. After a demonstrator circuit was designed and built, it was tested by using an external real time target machine to generate the corresponding PWM signals in correspondence to a controlling signal generated via Simulink. The final product of this thesis confirmed the simulation results such as an improved signal quality at higher frequencies in comparison to an available measurement from a previous generation circuit. The flexibility of the topology as well as the possibility of implementing a digital control was also confirmed during this phase of the project. Upon further work, the dimensioning of the output low pass filter should be improved and a digital PID controller should be implemented in the controlling FPGA.