Implementation of Voltage Control of Buck Converter Using Beckhoff Programmable Logic Controller

Abstract

The subject of this paper is design, testing and implementation of voltage control of buck power electronics converter using programmable logic controller (PLC) which is based on Beckhoff technology. The proposed control structure is first modelled in the Matlab/Simulink software environment. The built Simulink model is then integrated and transferred to the TwinCAT 3 software which converts personal computer (PC)/laptop into the real-time PLC. This paper proposes an experimental platform consisting of the following components: laptop computer used as the PLC, Beckhoff input/output (I/O) interface, power electronics converter with gate driver module, and electronic modules for measuring and adjusting the signals between the converter and the Beckhoff PLC. In this paper, the control is implemented on the example of the buck converter. However, the proposed modular experimental platform can be used for any type of the converter. Thanks to the integration of the Matlab/Simulink and TwinCAT 3 software environments and the modularity of the platform, the proposed experimental platform is suitable for rapid prototyping of different control structures of power electronics converters, which is especially useful for educational and research purposes. The given experimental results validate excellent performances of the proposed platform.