Real-time simulation and control of reluctance motor drives for high speed operation with reduced torque ripple

This paper presents real-time simulation results of a switched reluctance motor (SRM) drive with a novel Torque Distribution Function (TDF) for high-speed applications, in order to reduce torque ripple. The SRM is fed by a three-phase unidirectional power converter having three legs, each of which consist of two IGBTs and two free-wheeling diodes. The SRM model incorporates all non-linearities between excitation currents, rotor position and flux linkages. For the purpose of control SRM drives, an improvement of the TDF method is proposed for high-speed applications, in order to reduce torque ripple. The real-time simulation of the drive is conducted on the RT-LAB realtime simulation platform. Since the converter is current-controlled, the simulator latency is critical to achieving good accuracy and to avoiding current overshoot. The paper demonstrates that this type of drive with simple hysteresis current control can be simulated in real-time at a time-step of 15µs, with good accuracy. The paper also introduces FPGA-based simulation technology required to test advanced algorithms like TDF.