Author : Arjun Viswanathan, Dundesh Chiniwar, J. Christopher, Pallanti Rao‡ and Naik Nithesh

In this paper, a 0.8kW car starter motor is taken and the solenoid has been modeled to study the contact bouncing phenomenon that occurs in the solenoid . A mathematical model based simulation is carried out on Simulink for various operating conditions. Several simulations to eliminate contact bounce were conducted by varying parameters of the system. It was found that contact bouncing in the solenoid cannot be completely eliminated, but can only be reduced. The bounce occurs due to the characteristic properties of the springs and masses that operate the solenoid. Several alternate solutions were evaluated for the possibility to replace the solenoid as the switching component .In this paper, an intelligent solid state switch for the starter motor has been designed using a micro-controller based Mosfet gate drive. A schematic has been developed on OrCAD® and also a general simulation of the switch was conducted on LTSpice to show the capability of the Mosfet as an alternate solution to power the starter motor .Hence this investigation concludes that there is a possibility of developing a lighter and cheaper starter motor with a solid state switch that can be implemented in cars.

Keywords: Starter motor concept, contact bounce simulation, intelligent solid state switch, contact bounce free starter motor design, Simulink mathematical model, OrCAD® Capture Design, LTSpice IV simulation.

Article published in International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.5, No.5 (Oct-2015)