A Novel Switched Reluctance Motor for Industr...

A Novel Switched Reluctance Motor for Industrial and Commercial Applications

Author Name : Rachael Lydia, S. Vetriselvan

ABSTRACT

Switched reluctance motors offer many benefits such as simplicity of construction, low costs, fault-tolerance and a high torque to inertia ratio. They also have no reliance on rare earth metals and therefore have no demagnetization temperature limitation. These benefits have made switched reluctance motors an attractive contender for use in a plethora of applications. These benefits however have been hindered by problems such as noise, torque ripple and lower torque density. It is only in recent times that reluctance machines can begin to compete with existing motor technologies through the use of new machine topologies. With advanced machine design and the holistic development of power electronics and microprocessor control methods, the advantages of these motors are brought to the force. In recent years, field oriented control has been implemented on stepper motor drives in order to achieve servo-like performance. This performance can be achieved at a fraction of the cost of a traditional permanent magnet synchronous servo system. While this is suitable for small size motors, larger size stepper motors with a high output power, large speed range and low cogging torque do not exist.