Abstract Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) gets overheated due to several unavoidable reasons. The consequences of missing a timely shutdown of the ICE can be serious and the engine can be considerably injured. In this paper, a novel, efficient and reliable electronic control unit for providing ICE Overheating Early Detection and Alarm (OTEDA) is proposed, implemented and tested. Regular sampling of the engine block temperature and the rate of temperature change within a cooling system stressing period is used to establish an engine’s thermal signature. The theory of early detection based on the engine thermal signature is explained. The OTEDA hardware is built around the latest temperature sensing digital technology provided by Texas Instruments. The main OTEDA unit building blocks and the software structure are explained. Field test on several commercial vehicles of different make and brands proves the value added by the proposed Electronic Control Unit (ECU) in protecting the engine from incidental overheating.

Sliding Discrete Fourier Transform (SDFT) is very efficient regarding computational load and it possesses a very fast phase angle detection with excellent harmonic rejection at nominal frequency. However, at off-nominal frequency, SDFT generates errors in both magnitude and phase angle due to spectral leakage. This paper introduces a workaround for Fourier Transform to handle this disability under off-nominal frequency while avoiding variable-rate sampling. Sliding Fourier Transform (SFT) is used as a phase detector for a phase-locked loop whose output frequency is used to drive the SFT. The paper revisits the mathematics of Fourier Transform (FT) in a three-phase setting via a time-domain approach to show a newly proposed filtering technique for the double-frequency oscillation just by summing the FT sine/cosine filter outputs of the three individual phases. Also, the analysis aims to determine and correct the phase and magnitude errors under offnominal frequency operation. The proposed technique (SFT-PLL) is tested in real time on dSPACE DS1202 DSP using voltage vectors that are pregenerated to simulate the most adverse grid conditions. The testing scenarios compare the performance of the SFT-PLL with that of the Decoupled Stationary Reference Frame PLL (dαβPLL). The results prove that SFT-PLL is superior to dαβPLL.

Direct torque control (DTC) is known to produce the fastest torque response in AC drives. In this paper, a wind turbine emulation (WTE) system using a squirrel cage induction motor (SCIM) working in a DTC mode is designed, implemented, and tested experimentally using Hardware-in-loop (HIL). The flux estimation is based on the current model where two stator currents and the rotor speed are measured. The DTC is realised using a space vector modulator to avoid variable switching frequency associated with the DTC switching tables. dSPACE MicroLabBox is used to handle the real-time control programmed in SIMULINK. Typhoon HIL402 is used to emulate the inverter, the machine, the connected mechanical load, and the feedback sensors of the current dc link voltage and speed. Thanks to the great flexibility offered by the HIL technique, a variety of tests has been conducted to validate the overall system performance. The tests include step change of load, step change of wind speed, operation under stochastic wind spe...

In wind energy conversion systems (WECS), the turbine captures part of the wind energy and converses it to mechanical energy through a dynamic interaction with the electrical generator which in turn converts this mechanical energy to electrical energy. Therefore, the dynamics of the wind turbine is very important in research and development of the overall WECS. Having a real wind turbine or a site with convenient wind conditions is not always a guaranteed option for conducting research. Hence, it is very desirable to create wind turbine dynamics through wind turbine emulation. In this paper, a wind turbine emulation system using a permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) is designed, simulated, implemented, and tested experimentally. The PMSM is torque-controlled using field orientation technique. A three-phase IGBT inverter with closed loop current PI-controllers is used to drive the PMSM. A dSPACE DS1104 DSP prototyping platform is used to handle the real-time execution of the control programs. The system is tested and the torque-speed characteristics of the emulated wind turbine are verified experimentally at different feeds of wind speeds and generator loads.