Novel Scheme of Driving Single Phase PM AC

Motor in Uni-Direction
John K. Kim, Ph.D. IEEE member
Robert Bosch Tool Corporation
1800 W.Central Road
Mt. Prospect, IL 60056, USA

Abstract - This paper describes a new scheme for driving single

phase AC motor which uses permanent magnet for its rotor. The
single phase AC PM motor has only one set of coil on the yoke of
the stator, and its two pole faces are symmetric shape. The rotor is
consists of ferrite permanent magnet magnetized only one pair of
poles. As well known, motor having these configurations can not
produce significant starting torque at certain direction, and
therefore, the rotating direction is absolutely random when it is
driven with sinusoidal AC voltage. The main objective of this
research is to drive the motor in uni-direction, under constant load,
by using fixed frequency AC utility line without changing the motor
shape and also with the commercially acceptable low cost.
Key Words AC motor, permanent magnet motor, motor control,
power electronics, single phase drive

type of motor is not a general permanent motor drive whose

principle is well described in many references.[1][2][3]
However, most of such permanent motor drives are with 3
phase to make a run at any intended directions. Some ideas to
run the single phase PM motor with modified shape are some
time introduced.[4] It is very rare but an example of magnetic
analysis for this type of single phase motor can be found in
reference [5].
B. System
The stator has two coils connected in series. The reason that
it has two coils instead of one is simply that it is easy and only
possible way to insert the coil onto the stator yoke. The
controller is basically consists of a triac, a hall sensor, and a 8bit micro-controller.

I. SINGLE PHASE PERMANENT MAGNET AC MOTOR

UNDER CONSTANT LOAD

A. Instructions
The stator coil in this motor is energized by sinusoidal 60Hz
120V AC utility source. Since the motor pole is symmetric
shape, the rotor is more likely parked at neutral position
initially, and the torque when it first energized can be either
attracting or repelling one depending on the polarity of the
source voltage. When it is repelling one, the rotor will start to
rotate but the direction would be absolutely random as theres
no traveling magnetic fields. However, once it began to rotate
in certain direction, the rotor will keep that direction due to the
inertia. In every half cycle, the torque will be an attracting
one, and therefore the speed of rotation is exactly the same as
the synchronous speed of the AC input.
The assignment given to this study was to run the motor,
under the constant load, in one desired direction instead of
random direction with the single phase PMAC motor and triac
based control circuit. The direction can be assigned either
clock wise or count clock wise, but it is assigned clock wise in
this presentation. This principle is most effective when it is
operated under constant load such as small water pump or air
fan where load is not changing within a constant speed. This

1-4244-0655-2/07/$20.002007 IEEE

Fig. 1. Motor

One hall-effect sensor is mounted on the stator pole as

shown as H1 in Fig.1. The algorithm embedded in the microcontroller is consists of input voltage zero crossing detection,
start-up procedure, direction monitoring algorithm, and
minimum current control technique. The start-up procedure
includes alignment and soft-start, and minimum current is
achieved by controlling the phase angle for trial firing angle
for each operation stage. The system block diagram is
presented in Fig.2.

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Fig. 2. System Block Diagram

turned on unless the gate pulse and current are in right timing.
In order that the rotor continues the rotation safely, the zero
crossing of voltage should not occurs until the completion of
Tof and current. For this purpose, dependence of the Tof time
to input voltage is investigated and the results are shown in
Table 1.

II. PRINCIPLE OF STARTING

A. Impulse Response
When the current is applied to the motor coils, repelling
torque is to be produced, and then the rotor is to reverse its
polarity. The time between the triggering the current and
completion of reverse of polarity is termed as rotor reversing
time, Tof in this paper. If the time, Tof, becomes too long
compared to the synchronous speed, the motor will not keep
rotating as the following torque is an attracting one and it
would tend to hold the rotor before the rotor reverses its
polarity. In vice verse, if the reversing time becomes too short,
the power efficient drops lower and acoustic noise will be
larger. To investigate rotors reversing the polarity, single
current pulses were applied by triggering the triac at extremely
long interval. The response time to change the rotor polarity
is compared as in Fig. 3.

For the motor and controller used in this study, the effect of
voltage change to reversing time was not significant. As an
example of ultimate situation, properties in case of 140V input
are investigated as shown in Fig. 4. As shown, the current is
completely dissipated before the Tof completed. Voltage zero
crossing should not be occurred until this time.

Nr.
1
2
3
4
5
6

TABLE 1
Measured Time of the polarity reverse
% error
Vs (V)
T0f
115
12.27 msec
4.60
120
11.73 msec
0
125
11.30 msec
- 3.67
130
10.90 msec
- 7.07
135
10.36 msec
140
10.00 msec

Hall Sensor
Motor Current
Hall Sensor

Gate Pulse
Motor Current
Gate Pulse
Fig.3. Rotor Reverse at Vs=115VAC

In real world, the voltage can be varied within the allowable

range. Even the gate pulse is sent to triac, it would not be

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Fig.4. Rotor Reverse at Vs=140VAC

B. ZVC and Rotor Polarity Detection

III. CHECKING THE DIRECTION OF ROTATION

To ensure the correct commutation, rotor position has to be

detected, and one hall effect sensor is used for this purpose.
The hall sensor signal is read at every falling edge of the zero
crossing of input voltage (ZVC). Since the ZVC represents
starting of positive half cycle of the supplied AC voltage, the
force will be that of repelling if the triac is turned on when the
hall sensor signal get logic high. If the hall sensor signal is
detected it being logic low, the program is waiting for next
half cycle, which is a negative cycle of the AC voltage. This
procedure is drawn in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5. ZVC and hall sensor signal manipulation

The key idea to monitor the direction by only one hall-effect

sensor is based on the fact that phase angle between voltage
zero crossing and signal from permanent magnet in rotor is not
the same for CW and CCW rotation only if the sensor is
placed at certain asymmetric location.
A. Principle of Direction Checking
As it can be seen later, the sensor waveform is shifting as
the position of the hall sensor is shifted while ZVC, gate
trigger pulse, and current waveform keep the same. Keeping
this property in mind, it is possible to create an algorithm to
detect the rotation from wrong direction. The timing of the
triac gate triggering is set to align with the falling and rising
edges of the hall sensor signal. Right after the end of the
trigger pulse, I/O bits for hall sensor signal in the micro is read
to determine if the sensor signal changed its polarity. The
algorithm to control the direction is in Fig. 7, and the timing
chart in Fig. 8 shows sequencing of the sensor bits reading.

C. Alignment and Soft Start

Before the starting, rotor may not be in neutral position. If
the rotor is shifted to opposite side of desired direction at the
beginning, the rotor will be pushed to that direction by the first
repelling torque. To reduce the chance of rotor runs opposite
direction, the initial rotor position needs to be aligned at right
position before the current builds up. For this purpose, a few
single triggering pulses producing attraction force are applied
to the motor in order to align the rotor at magnetic center of
the pole before start up, and this procedure is named as
alignment. The number of steps before normal speed run has
to be examined in order to find the optimal value of the soft
starting. The optimal value should be the minimum number
needed for correct direction. Fig. 6 shows the motor current
and hall effect sensor waveforms obtained from digital
oscilloscope. The signal from hall-effect sensor shows the
rotor start to rotate after the alignment process is completed.

Fig. 7. Algorithm for rotating direction check

current
Fig. 8. Time chart for hall sensor signal read
hall sensor

Fig. 6. Current (upper) and hall sensor (lower) waves with soft start process

It is one of the most important requirements that the location

of the hall effect sensor should not be aligned at the magnetic
center of the pole. If the rotor is rotating in count clock wise
(CCW) direction, length of magnet pole to change its polarity
is much longer than the length when it is rotating in clock wise
(CW). Two kind of wave plots can be observed at the

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experiments, and the two captures in Fig. 9 show CCW

rotation and CW rotation, respectively.
In these plots, wave of the gate trigger signal, voltage
waveform, load current, and hall sensor signal are shown from
the top. It is noticeable that the gate signal has the same
phase angle against the input voltage regardless of the
rotation. However, phase shift of the hall sensor signal is
quite different between two plots.

2
p
For CCW rotation, conditions
r > gt

f + r =

(1)

(2)

f <0
f ,r <

(3)

2
p

max( r , gt ) < dc <

hall sensor

(4)

2
p

(5)

have to be satisfied.
voltage

For CW rotation, conditions

f < gt

current

r < 0
2
p
2
gt < dc < (
f )
p
have to be satisfied.

r , gt <

gate pulse

(a) CW 120V

(6)
(7)
(8)
(9)

For both cases, the direction checking angle dc and triac

gate turn on angle gt should be such that
2
dc + gt <
(10)
p
Another fact one can find from above pictures is that 0f,
angle between voltage zero crossing and falling edge of the
rotor sensor signal, is getting shorter as the supplied voltage
increases. This result supports the previous assumption that
the torque in a half cycle is an impulsive torque rather than
constant torque. In an algorithm to monitor the direction of
rotation, traic is continued to turn on only when above angular
condition is satisfied. This procedure is most important at the
starting stage as the motion due to the inertia is not yet built
up.

hall sensor
voltage
current
gate pulse

(b) CCW 120V

Fig. 9. Gate Signal, Voltage, Current, Hall Sensor Waveforms

B. Angular Criterion
The input voltage can be varied within the range allowed by
national standard. As the input voltage varying, the current
can be changed, and as a result, the rotor shifting time can also
be changed accordingly. Because of this property, angular
characteristic needs to be investigated for proper control.
Lets define, f for an angle between voltage zero crossing and
falling edge of the rotor sensor signal, r for an angle between
voltage zero crossing and falling edge of the rotor sensor
signal, gt for the triac gate turn on delay angle after voltage
zero crossing, and dc for the direction checking angle. If
rotor arc angle of the poles are symmetric and p is for number
of poles, relationship in eq.(1) can be established. (In this
case, p =2)

Triac is the power switching device whose self turn off is

unable and the commutation is only controlled by phase angle
shift. Since the input is of sinusoidal voltage from a typical
utility source fixed with 60Hz 120V, optimal delay time can
be determined from the minimum load current condition while
the rotation is securely correct. Table 2 presents test result to
find the optimal phase angle delay time.
If the delay time was as short as 1.73 milli second, duration
of the conduction was longer than half period and it
overlapped gating pulse for the second half cycle. As a result,
second half cycle of the current was not commutated. The
current is decreasing as the delay time increases, but the motor
does not starting beyond a critical value. The critical value of
longer delay is 3.26 milli second and if the time becomes
longer than 3.46 milli second, the motor fails to start. The

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optimal delay time has to be selected 3.07 milli second where

both minimum current and stability are obtained.

Delay Time (msec)

1.73
1.92
2.11
2.30
2.69
2.88
3.07
3.26
3.46

REFERENCES
[1] J.R. Hendershot Jr. and T.J.E. Miller, Design of brushless permanent
magnet motors, Magna Physics Publishing and Clarendon Press. Oxford,
1994 p4.3
[2] S.A.Nasar, I.Boldea, I.E.Unnewehr, Permanent Magnet, Reluctance, and
Self-Synchronous Motors, CRC Press, 1993
[3] T.J.Miller, Brushless Permanent-Magnet and Reluctance Motor
Drives,Clarendon Press-Oxford. 1989
[4] Ohta, H.; Sato, T.; Masugane, I.; Matsuse, K., Rotor pole discrimination
and simple starting method of new single-phase PM motor without position
sensor, Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference, 2000.
Proceedings. IPEMC 2000. The Third International Volume 2, 15-18 Aug.
2000
[5] Ertan, H.B.; Dag, B.; Capolino, G.-A, Calculation of Parameters of
Single-Phase PM Motor for Design Optimization, Energy Conversion, IEEE
Transactions on Volume 20, Issue 3, Sept. 2005

TABLE 2
Phase Angle Delay Time
Current (mA)
Success / Fail
380
only half cycle is on
450
Success
455
Success
452
Success
445
Success
432
Success
420
Best stability
395
Critical
No Run

IV. VERIFICATION
To verify the uni-directional rotation and assumptions stated
above, experiments were performed with following methods.
Near to the hall effect sensor (H1) installed for commutation
and direction monitor, one more hall sensor (H2) was installed
for the purpose of direction verification. This second halleffect sensor is located at the opposite side of stator poles
central axis from the first sensor H1. It is obvious that the
rotation is clock wise as sensor signal H2 leads the sensor
signal H1.

Fig. 10. Second hall sensor installed on the stator

Fig. 11. Waveforms from two hall sensors

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