A Fully Sliding Mode Sensorless Control of a PMSM for a Household Appliance

The control of permanent magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs) requires accurate rotor position and speed information, typically obtained through physical sensors. Although effective, these sensors introduce complexity, additional costs and potential failure points into the system. Against this backdrop, there is a need to develop sensorless control techniques that allow the quantities required to control the motor to be estimated, eliminating the dependence on physical sensors. In recent years, the sliding mode control (SMC) approach has emerged as a promising solution for sensorless control of PMSMs due to its robustness against model uncertainties and perturbations. The main contribution of this work is the study and the experimental test of a fully SMC architecture for both controlling and observing the state variables of a PMSM, working on a real household appliance. The proposed approach, when compared with the conventional PI control usually implemented by Whirlpool on domestic machines, has demonstrated a noticeable improvement in terms of control performances and robustness.