Design and Performance Analysis of an Adaptive PID Controller for Brushless DC Motor Systems in Electric Vehicles

Brushless DC (BLDC) motors are now the dominant propulsion choice for electric vehicles (EVs) because of their high torque density, efficiency and reliability, but their nonlinear dynamics, electronic commutation and wide load and speed range make fixed-gain control difficult. A single set of proportional–integral–derivative (PID) gains tuned at one operating point degrades when inertia, back-EMF or load torque change. This paper presents a hybrid adaptive PID speed controller for a BLDC EV drive that couples an online PID auto-tuner, which re-estimates the gains from a frequency-response estimate of the plant, with a fast fixed-structure PID that supplies the rapid corrective action the auto-tuner cannot provide during its estimation interval. The novelty of the work is this explicit two-element decomposition operating on a cascaded speed/voltage loop driven by Hall-sensor feedback, which removes the need for an exact analytical feedback model while retaining the transparency of classical PID. A full analytical model of the BLDC machine and the closed-loop transfer functions is derived and implemented in MATLAB/Simulink. Across step references of 1000–1800 rpm and load steps to 10 N·m, and against a conventional fixed-gain PID and a Flower Pollination Algorithm (FPA) tuned PID, the proposed controller holds overshoot below 1% at low-to-mid speed and consistently lower torque ripple, while a 12.4% transient undershoot at 1800 rpm under sudden load identifies the present operating limit and a direction for future work.