Performance analysis of switched reluctance motor drive using front end converter

Abstract

Nowadays, Switched Reluctance (SR) motor drives are playing an important role in variable speed applications since they have excellent features like robust structure, high starting torque, low production cost, less maintenance, and wide range of speed control. With these merits, SR motors are becoming more attractive in several industrial applications such as electric vehicles, harvesting of renewable energy, wind power generation, aerospace, process control, and aviation industry. Regardless of these advantages, SR motor was no longer in use until the development of power electronic technology that made the researchers and consumers turn their attention towards the SR motor drive. However, it has some drawbacks such as high torque ripple, low power density, and high acoustic noise as compared with other electrical machines. newlineThe main cause of the torque ripple is due to the structure of the SR motor which is doubly salient; hence, the magnetic characteristics including flux, torque, and inductance profile are non-linear. Because of its non-linear features, the SR motor operation acquires the phase current commutation. The SR motor cannot develop sufficient torque to drive the load, if the phase current does not meet the desired value during the increasing slope of inductance. Also, if the phase current does not drop to zero during the commutation, the SR motor may cause the generation of the negative torque. Furthermore, quick magnetization and demagnetization is the challenging task at high speeds in the conventional SR motor drives, since the phase voltage is restricted to DC link voltage. Also due to high power ripple in the conventional drive system, bulk capacitors are required in DC link which affects the drive performance. All, the above drawbacks will exhibit the high torque ripple, acoustic noise, and mechanical vibration in the conventional SR motor drives. Therefore, a special front-end converter (FEC) is needed in the SR motor drive system to increase the DC link voltage and to make the independent c