Classroom Education Enhancement: An Open Air-Gap Motor Drive Testbed With Multiple Operation Modes

Advances in power electronics and motor control increasingly demand engineering education that integrates theory and practice. Traditional closed-loop laboratory setups limit students' ability to explore interactions among converters, control strategies, and motor dynamics. We present a reconfigurable motor drive testbed based on an open-frame linear motor with adjustable air-gap, supporting synchronous, induction, and doubly-fed modes via modular three-phase inverter control. The platform enables hands-on exploration of key concepts, including field-oriented control, slip frequency behavior, PWM modulation, excitation schemes, and sensor-based feedback, while providing real-time data acquisition and vector control across multiple motor types. Serving both as a pedagogical tool and an experimental platform, it allows comparative studies under varying rotor excitations, bridging theoretical instruction and practical implementation. The system also supports scalable research for validating control algorithms in linear motion drives, demonstrating its effectiveness in structured experiential learning in power electronics and motor control.