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Switched reluctance motor (SRM) is been considered for electric drive applications because of its low cost and robustness. Nevertheless, the power electronics needed to operate the drive increases its cost and volume, and also reduces its running reliability. Hence, the number of switches, diodes, and sensors involved are needed to be reduced by improving the power converter topology. Therefore, sensorless torque control of SRM using a single current sensor Resistor-Dump (R-Dump) converter is proposed in this study. An R-Dump converter is proposed in this study because it has minimal power components compared with mostly use converters like an asymmetric half-bridge converter (AHBC). The sensorless control is developed based on a new sliding mode observer (SMO) that is defined to only use a single current measurement and an inductance model to estimate the rotor position of the SRM. Furthermore, the proposed drive is simulated in MATLAB/SIMULINK and compared with a conventional SMO based senseless SRM drive. Results from the simulation show that the proposed converter topology, torque control, and position estimation methods can significantly reduce the size and cost of the SRM drive with a negligible increase in torque ripple compared to the conventional methods.
Inspec keywords: torque control; position control; bridge circuits; switching convertors; observers; sensorless machine control; variable structure systems; resistors; reluctance motor drives; permanent magnet motors; rotors
Subjects: Mechanical variables control; Multivariable control systems; Spatial variables control; Synchronous machines; Power convertors and power supplies to apparatus; Resistors; Drives; Control of electric power systems