Automotive applications, notably in electric vehicles (EVs), hinge crucially on power electronics and electric drives. The emergence of high-efficiency, high-power-density converters in motor drives and energy systems, driven by technologies like wide-bandgap (WBG) power electronics devices (SiC/GaN), has garnered significant attention. While Variable-speed drives (VSDs) offer a solution to reduce industry motor energy consumption by 30 to 50%, their adoption remains low, with less than 20% of electric motors currently equipped with VSDs. A 2018 ABB report suggests that globally installing VSDs for non-equipped industrial motors could cut electricity consumption by about 10%. The term Adjustable-speed drives (ASDs) is now synonymous with VSDs. Despite their potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, barriers such as high initial costs, space requirements, weight, and shorter lifespan compared to the motor itself hinder widespread ASD implementation. To address these challenges, the integrated motor drive (IMD) concept is proposed, offering solutions like lower cost, reduced mass, smaller volume, heightened reliability, fault tolerance, efficiency, and temperature operation.

Conventional proportional-integral (PI) control methods for converters and drives, favored for their simplicity, lack flexibility in handling disturbances, noises, or uncertainties. Advanced control methods providing robustness to these issues, including disturbance observer (DO)-based control schemes and promising data-based control approaches, have gained attention. This special session aims to explore recent techniques and studies encompassing analysis, simulation, and experiments to address design and control challenges in power converters and motor drives for automotive systems.

Topics of interests include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Topologies and control of power converters in automotive applications,
• Traction control design for electric vehicles,
• Applications of wide-bandgap semiconductors in automotive applications,
• Design, analysis, and assessment of traction motors,
• Design and control of battery chargers,
• Magnetics problems in electric vehicle applications.

Special Session Co-chairs:

• Ton Duc Do, Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan.
• Duy-Dinh Nguyen, Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Vietnam.

Submission link: https://edas.info/newPaper.php?c=31104&track=122198