DC-Biased Sinusoidal Current Excited Switched Reluctance Motor Drives Based on Flux Modulation Principle

This article proposes a novel current control technique for three-phase switched reluctance motor (SRM) drives with harmonic current suppression, based on developed flux modulation principle. For conventional SRM control systems, the unsmooth and discontinuous stator current cause serious torque ripple, vibration, and noise, due to the doubly salient motor structure. In order to overcome shortcomings in conventional drives, the developed flux modulation principle is employed for the SRM in this article, where the working principle is investigated in detail, including the excitation magnetic field, flux modulator, and armature magnetic field. Then, a new control strategy is presented to generate the dc-biased sinusoidal current, by employing the modular open-winding converter. Furthermore, a harmonic current suppression strategy is put forward for the new drive to improve the motor performance, by employing a developed vector proportional integral control scheme. Compared to existing SRM drives, the torque ripple and motor vibration can be both significantly reduced, the motor structure and winding arrangement do not need to be changed, and the robustness of the motor system is improved. Finally, experiments are carried out on a three-phase 12/8 SRM prototype to verify the effectiveness of the proposed SRM drive and control strategy.