Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management Washington DC, USA, September 27-29, 2018 © IEOM Society International Design and Implementation of a Small Scale Linear Switched Reluctance Motor JY Lokamba, Nnamdi Nwulu and Kabeya Musasa Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Science, University of Johannesburg, Auckland Park Kingsway Campus, Johannesburg, South Africa nnwulu@uj.ac.za Abstract In this study, the working principles of a linear switched reluctance motor (LSRM) are demonstrated through the design and implementation of a linear switched reluctance motor with its appropriate control system. The paper focuses on merely demonstrating the working principles of the LSRM, and consequently does not focus on a specific application. A 6/4 poled, 3-phase LSRM is designed and implemented. The LSRM is controlled using a micro- controller and the accuracy of the control was improved by using linear incremental position sensors for feedback. Keywords Linear Switched Reluctance Motor, Speed control, linesar electric drives, electric drives control 1. INTRODUCTION The LSRM finds itself applicable in many of the industrial applications, and it has started to gain popularity in recent years due to its reliability in harsh conditions and simplicity of construction. The LSRM can be used over a wide range of speeds, this flexibility allows the LSRM to be suitable in a number of application such as: Medical, elevators, locomotives and many more. However, the control of the LSRM is complex because of the nonlinear behaviour of the LSRM. The LSRM is a suitable replacement of the linear induction or synchronous motors, because of the ease of manufacturing, reliability, good fault tolerance and lack of windings on the stator or the translator. The most commonly used motors in industrial applications are the induction and synchronous motor, the initial motion of these motors is rotational. Hence, in industrial applications where linear motion is needed, it is obtained by adding mechanical belts with pulleys and gearboxes. The addition of these components reduce the efficiency of the motor, as a result this supports the LSRM as a more attractive alternative in industrial applications that require linear motion. In this paper, a detailed design of the LSRM is given. The design begins in the rotary domain and is then converted to the linear domain. The design is carried out in this manner because the rotational switched reluctance motor (RSRM) is the counterpart of the LSRM, thus the existing RSRM design methods can be extended to design the LSRM. Furthermore, the different control strategies are mentioned and a detailed explanation of the controller using the dsPIC33FJ16GS502 is given. The paper shall follow the following order: Section II presents the working principle of LSRM, section III the design equations of the LSRM, section IV the power electronic converter, and section V the control system and section VI is conclusions. 2. WORKING PRINCIPLE The LSRM is obtained from its counterpart, the RSRM. For the RSRM, the number of stator poles is generally greater than that of the rotor poles, and the motors are characterized by the number of stator poles and rotor poles. For example, a RSRM of six stator poles and 4 rotor poles would be denoted as 6/4, other available combinations are 8/4, 8/6, 10/6 and so forth [1]. There are two types of configurations for the LSRM, namely the longitudinal flux and the transverse flux configurations. Both of the above mentioned configurations can be obtained from the RSRM by simply cutting it along its diagonal and unfolding the stator and rotor. The configurations of the LSRM are shown in Figure 1 and 2 below. The RSRM configuration is shown in Figure 3. The windings of an LSRM can either be on the rotor or the stator, unlike the RSRM where the windings are only found on the stator [2]. Also, the LSRM can have an active stator and passive rotor or vice versa. The configuration with active stator has an advantage because the power converter and power supply are stationary, which results in less weight of the moving portion of the 896