DESIGN OF FPGA-BASED EXPERIMENTS AT ENGINEERING EDUCATION TO CONTROL DIRECT CURRENT MOTORS

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The direct current (DC) motor is considered one of the most versatile machines in the industry due to it has a wide range of speeds, it is easy to control its position, torque and speed and it is flexible in torque-speed features. Due to these features, in recent years has increased the use of DC motors in applications of control and process automation where machines with variable speed, a wide range of speed and fine control are required. Meanwhile, FPGA (Field-programmable gate array) technology begins to be used in control applications of electrical machines because their ability to evaluate multiple processes concurrently, allowing it to exploit the inherent parallelism of the existing control laws, and the evolution of design tools for FPGAs make the modelling process a simple task and reduce system design time. Considering the above, it is evident the need to include issues related with the control of DC motors using FPGAs in engineering careers with a focus on electronics, which leads to an imperious need to count on specialized tools in this area. Furthermore, it is essential to include methodologies to efficiently incorporate these tools into courses. This paper presents an educational web-based tool for teaching the control system design of DC motors through FPGA-based experiments under a project-based learning approach. A qualitative research method was utilized in a performed experiment to evaluate this proposed tool Key Words: project-based learning, web-based experimentation, FPGA-based control of DC motors, process improvement, Field-programmable gate array.