Automotive propulsion drive emulation using two cascaded inverters

The paper is devoted to the development of a numerically-controlled experimental bench dedicated to the testing of automotive electric drives. The bench is built around (i) a power system made up of two DC-AC converters with their AC sides connected through a three phase inductor, and (ii) a control system incorporating a NI PXI interface in which is embedded a real-time simulation HIL system. The control of the power system is simply achieved by two analog signals that are converted to PWM signals driving the switches of the DC-AC converters. The potentialities of the developed bench are highlighted through the emulation of different automotive cycles including acceleration and braking.