energies Article Implementation and Control of Six-Phase Induction Motor Driven by a Three-Phase Supply Mohamed I. Abdelwanis 1, * , Essam M. Rashad 2 , Ibrahim B. M. Taha 3 and Fathalla F. Selim 1   Citation: Abdelwanis, M.I.; Rashad, E.M.; Taha, I.B.M.; Selim, F.F. Implementation and Control of Six-Phase Induction Motor Driven by a Three-Phase Supply. Energies 2021, 14, 7798. https://doi.org/10.3390/ en14227798 Academic Editors: Victor Becerra and Ahmed Rachid Received: 20 October 2021 Accepted: 18 November 2021 Published: 22 November 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Electrical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Kafrelsheikh University, P.O. Box 33516, Kafr El Sheikh 33516, Egypt; fateh.saleem@eng.kfs.edu.eg 2 Electrical Engineering Department, Faculty of Engineering, Tanta University, P.O. Box 31111, Tanta 31527, Egypt; emrashad@ieee.org 3 Department of Electrical Engineering, College of Engineering, Taif University, P.O. Box 11099, Taif 21944, Saudi Arabia; i.taha@tu.edu.sa * Correspondence: mohamed.soliman4@eng.kfs.edu.eg Abstract: This paper is interested in implementing and controlling a modified six-phase induction motor (MSPIM) when fed from a three-phase supply either via an inverter or with a direct grid connection loaded by a centrifugal pump. The main aims of using the MSPIM are to enhance motor reliability and reduce torque pulsation. A three-to-six phase transformer has been designed, implemented, and employed to enable the SPIM to be driven from a three-phase supply. It is preferable to use the three-to-six phase transformers integrated with three-phase inverter on using the six-phase inverter to generate lower values of harmonics and lower steady-state error of speed and reduce the starting current and because also it isolates the primary circuit from the secondary, and the cost will be lower compared to the design of a special six-phase inverter. Dynamic models of SPIM, three-to-six phase transformer, and three-phase variable speed drive are derived. Then, a scalar (V/F) closed-loop control of SPIM is employed, and the results are discussed. Fine-tuning of PID controllers is used to keep the motor speed tracking the reference value. A low pass filter is connected to reduce the ripple of voltage and current waveforms. An experimental setup has been built and implemented to check the possibility of controlling SPIM by a variable speed drive system fed from a three-to-six phase transformer. It is found that the proposed method can be effectively used to drive the SPIM from a three-phase supply. Keywords: PWM; six-phase induction motor; harmonic distortion; three-and six-phase transformers 1. Introduction Induction motors (IM) are the most employed machines in the market, particularly in fixed-speed applications. They occupy about 70% of the employed electric machines [1–4]. It is because they can work directly online and with inverters [5]. Further, they do not use rare-earth magnets, and thus they have a cheap cost. Standard induction machines are of three-phase configuration due to the high availability of three-phase grids. The six-phase induction motor is characterized by improving the torque density and fault tolerance capabilities to reduce losses and improve the motor performance [6]. Multi-phase machines are gaining interest in several industrial applications, e.g., pumps, compressors, etc. [7–10]. Some researchers [11–13] introduced the multi-phase systems over six phases to verify the advantages of these systems compared to traditional ones. However, increasing the number of phases also increases the size of the inverter and complicates the associated control systems [14]. Among multi-phase systems, six-phase induction machines have been proposed in the literature [13]. It is because they can be rewound using existing standard three-phase stator frames. In [1,15], a comparison between three-phase and six-phase induction motors Energies 2021, 14, 7798. https://doi.org/10.3390/en14227798 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/energies