Design of a governor for the laboratory machines

Exhibitor: Tian Hua Lee

Supervisor: Allan Walton

Research Group: Complex and Intelligent Systems

Industry Sector: Energy and Utilities

Digital control of industrial processes has become very important today because of the advantages it offers and increased availability of inexpensive computing power of microcontrollers. Accurate speed control is a requirement in many industrial and process control systems. The control of speed of a synchronous machine is critical and it is now moving completely from analogue control to digital control

The objective of the thesis is to design a fully controlled three phase rectifier circuit using a closed looped system concept. PC based software controlling is adopted to retain simplicity and ease of implementation. The paper is written with the intention of illustrating how the speed of the DC motor can be controlled by the microcontroller. A train of gate pulses are generated to the pulse transformers which in turn drives the gate of the thyristors. The D.C. motor consists of a field winding and an armature and speed control is achieved by regulating the voltage applied to the motor. It further explains the methodology used in the speed feedback. This will ensure that the motor is brought back to the speed set by the user irrespective of the load.

In conclusion, this paper work will provide students and researchers a better understanding of digital control of synchronous machines. Power converters will be discussed in some detail and their performance and applications will be studied. Suggestions for further improvement on the digital speed governor are made so that the design will be perfect in time to come.

Thesis Document (PDF)