4th Power Electronics,Drive Systems & Technologies Conference (PEDSTC2013),Feb 13-14,2013,Tehran,Iran
High Effcient Torque Control of Switched
Reluctance Motor Taking Nonlinear and Saturation
Effects into Account
M.Dowlatshahi, S.M.Saghaian-Nejad,M. Afshoon
Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
Isfahan University of Technology (IUT)
Isfahan, Iran
Dolatshahi@ec.iut.ac.ir
Abstract-Torque pulsation mechanism and highly nonlinear
magnetic characterization of switched reluctance motors (SRM)
lead to unfavorable torque ripple and reduce the variety of
applications in industry. In this paper, a torque sharing function
(TSF) is proposed considering magnetic saturation effects as well
as minimizing power loss during the commutation region.
Constant torque trajectories are considered in phase currents
plane based on nonlinear T-i-theta curves which are obtained by
experimental measurements. Optimum points selection on
constant torque trajectories are based on improving drive
efciency and minimizing copper loss in each rotor position. This
has been achieved by fnding the tangent intersection between the
constant curves and a circle with minimum radius in entering
and outgoing phase currents plane. Compared to conventional
TSFs, the resultant reference current from the proposed method
has less peak and effective values. Moreover, it also has
acceptable performance especially in high torque low speed
applications. An experimental four phase 1.6 K, 8/6 SRM set of
magnetic characterization data used to simulate and validate the
effectiveness of the proposed method.
Keywords-Torque Control; Switched Reluctance Motor;
Power Loss Minimization; Saturation effects
I. INTRODUCTION
Switched reluctance motor (SRM) is a double salient motor
with no winding or pennanent magnet on rotor. It has rugged
and fault tolerant structure with the most robust and reliable
constructions [1]. Due to the simple structure, low
manufacturing and repairing costs as well as ability to operate
in wide range of temperature, SRM has been taking into
accounts more recently. One of the most drawbacks in
switched reluctance applications is high torque ripple
compared than other ac type machines [2]. Torque pulsation
mechanism and high saturated nature of magnetic
characterization can cause undesirable torque ripple and
deteriorate drive perfonnance especially in high precise
industrial applications. In order to suppress torque ripple many
investigations have been done recently and many torque
control techniques introduced [3]-[9]. Even though design
approaches were taking into consideration in [3],[4] to
produce constant torque and minimizing torque ripple, control
978-1-4673-4484-5/13/$31.00 ©2013 IEEE
49
Jin Who Ahn
Mechatronics Engineering Department
Kyungsung University
Busan, Korea
techniques have been more considered to control the total
torque in conventional existing switched reluctance motors.
One of the most convenient approaches is coordinate incoming
and outgoing phase torque so that the total torque remains
constant during the commutation between phases. Torque
Sharing Function (TSF) is a well known torque control
alterative in which reference torques for individual phases
defned assuming the total torque stays at constant level.
Direct instantaneous torque control (DITC) is also the simple
torque control concept. However, implementation of switching
rules is complicated. Some of the conventional TSFs such as
linear, cosine, cubic and exponential types reported in
literature. Effective and peak phase curents, power loss and
voltage requirements during the commutation would be some
possible secondary objective fnctions to make an optimal
TSF. However, having a lower power loss implies faster
commutation between two adjacent curent phases and this
may cause voltage saturation. Vujicic [9] introduced a family
of TSFs using different secondary objectives such as power
loss minimization and drive constraint taking into account.
However, considering linear magnetic characterization and
simple torque equation may cause to deteriorate drive
efciency. Moreover, selecting the slope of inductance in
linear or saturation region has greatest impact on effectiveness
of this method especially for load torque near the rated value.
In [8] a logical TSF proposed in which the outgoing phase
current damped quickly and total torque remained constant
using regulation of torque produced by incoming phase.
However, the motor is considered in linear region and point
selection on torque constant trajectories was based on general
knowledge of user and decreasing the outgoing phase current.
Increasing peak current and voltage stress are the other
drawbacks of this method. In this paper, constant torque
trajectory in phase current plane will be obtained using the
completely nonlinear torque equation and considering
saturation region of magnetic characterization. Power loss
minimization will be assumed as secondary objective fnction.
Aferwards, point selection on constant torque trajectory
curves will be accomplished in favor of power loss reduction
for each rotor position. Simulation results will be given to