Development of Control techniques for Direct AC‐AC Matrix Converter fed Multi‐

There are numerous industrial applications, such as paper mills, locomotive traction, oil and gas, mining and machine tools, which require high performance control of more than one electric motor simultaneously. When more than one electric motors are employed in an electric drive, it is called, ‘multi‐motor drive’. These multi‐motor drives are generally available in two configurations. The first one consists of a number of three‐phase voltage source inverters connected in parallel to a common DC link, each inverter feeding a three‐phase AC motor. This configuration allows independent control of all machines by means of their own three‐phase voltage source inverters (VSIs). Nevertheless, this configuration needs n number of voltage source inverters for supplying n number of AC machines. The second configuration comprises one inverter, which feeds multiple parallel‐connected three‐phase motors. However, the later configuration does not allow independent control of each motor and is suitable only for traction application. The power converter supplying the drive system, are conventionally, voltage source inverters. However, alternative solution could be a direc