Publications

Abstract : Permanent magnet and induction motors have been used for industrial applications and Electric Vehicles (EV) due to their ideal cost, efficiency, and drive simplicity. However, the auto industry is now starting to replace these machines with reluctance motors that offer better power density, efficiency, and durability. Reluctance motors attract industry interest as they can be manufactured with little to no permanent magnets and possess a lower manufacturing cost than other motor designs. However, these motors are more complex to drive than DC brushed or AC induction motors due to their nonlinear inductance characteristics and resulting high vibration/noise. Due to this, the drive technology to run these motors was not feasible until solid-state switching and microcontrollers became mainstream. The benefits and drawbacks of a three-phase 6/4 60kW Switched Reluctance Motor (SRM) drive using Bang-Bang current control and fuzzy logic control with a separate gate signal blocking module will be studied through MATLAB Simulink. Between the two control logics, the variations in rise and fall time along with the deviation of actual speed from reference motor speed will be compared to see which motor drive logic offers the most ideal performance during gate signal blocking operation. The gate signal blocking module will block the gate signal to the switches at an alternate number of rotor rotations and therefore cause the motor drive to inject more power during rotations of the unblocked gate signal.