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Inductance Measurements in Switched Reluctance Machines

Nikolay Radimov1 , Natan Ben-Hail2 , and Raul Rabinovici1 , Senior Member, IEEE
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel Kittek, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel
We propose a simple method for measuring the parameters of switched reluctance machines. We compare our method with two other methods for evaluating inductance under conditions of strong magnetic saturation. We present the results of our measurements and those of nite-element simulations. Index TermsInductance measurements, switched reluctance machine.

I. INTRODUCTION

HE switched reluctance motor (SRM) is utilized in industry and home application as an alternative drive to induction motor drives [1]. The SRM, as shown in Fig. 1, has a salient rotor without windings and a salient stator with concentrated coils. There exists a strong magnetic saturation in the stator yoke due to a rather small air gap. The parameters of the SRM need to be known, e.g., for providing a good on-line control [1], [2]. The phase inductance is a basic parameter that could completely describe the SRM behavior. The present paper compares two commonly used methods for the measurement or evaluation of the SRM phase inductance with a method that is proposed by the authors called the one-pulse test method. II. ONE-PULSE TEST METHOD The circuit of Fig. 2 is proposed for the measurement of the instantaneous value of the phase inductance that corresponds to an instantaneous value of the phase current. The measurements are performed in the following way. Step 1) S1 turn on, S2 turn off. The external capacitor is charged to the desired level of the dc voltage. Step 2) S1 turn off, S2 turn on. The external capacitor is discharged through the phase winding. The experimental data of phase voltage and current are recorded by a digital oscilloscope and transferred to a computer. The process of discharging the external capacitor takes about a fraction of a second. The SRM is not heated at all. As a result, the SRM phase resistance does not change during the measurements. Experimental results of the voltage and current waveforms are shown in Fig. 3. The magnetic ux linkage in the SRM phase could be estimated from the experimental data as follows:
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of a 6/4-pole SRM.

Fig. 2. Circuit for the measurement of the phase inductance. The experiments were performed with the external capacitor C = 330 F and the measurement resistor R = 0:2
( 1% LVR-3,DALE). The phase resistance is R = 2
. The oscilloscope is Tektronix 210, 60 MHz, 1 GS/s.

(1)

Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TMAG.2005.844835

Here is the voltage across the stator phase, is the stator is the SRM phase resistance. Results of the ux current, and linkage estimation are shown in Fig. 4. The graphs were obtained while only the rising part of the current wave is considered. The waveforms of the phase voltage and current should be rst processed to reject the dc bias of the oscilloscope. The waveform of the phase voltage is used only

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TABLE I MOTOR DATA OF THE 6/4-POLE SRM: EMOTRON RRA-71B

1) The waveform could be smoothed by using a moving average lter as follows: (2) The lter yields the average value of the input signal over a period . The period is chosen quite small but sufcient large to reject the high-frequency oscillations. The noise with zero mean could be neglected. The phase current waveform could be smoothed for the further computation of the phase inductance. 2) The mean square estimation by a high degree polynomial could be applied to smooth the phase ux linkage curve versus the phase current within the region (see Fig. 4). Standard routines of Matlab are utilized for this function, e.g., MatLab 6.5. Therefore, the expression to calculate the phase inductance versus the phase current would be

Fig. 3. Phase current and voltage across the stator phase. Channel 1 is the phase voltage, Channel 2 is the phase current. The experiments were performed with the external capacitor C = 330 F and the measurement resistor R = 0:2
( 1% LVR-3,DALE). The phase resistance is R = 2
. The oscilloscope is Tektronix 210, 60 MHz, 1 GS/s.

(3) where are the coefcients of the polynomial that approximate versus the phase current I. In this the phase ux linkage case, would be referred as an independent vector. This method was used in the present work. The results of calculation of the phase inductance by (3) are presented in Fig. 8. The present one-pulse test could be seen as a renement of the measurement method presented in [3]. There, a lead acid battery is used to excite the SRM phase winding during the test. Furthermore, the phase voltage and current waveforms during the SRM magnetic ux building are recorded. It seems that the present method is even more convenient. The excitation current could be easily adjusted by changing the capacitor voltage and capacitor value. The charging voltage supply could be a very simple rectier and a mains connected autotransformer. Furthermore, there is no fear of heating and damaging the SRM phase winding by a too long connection to the battery. The present method could be also used for measuring the SRM phase inductance in intermediate rotor positions.

Fig. 4. Results of estimating of the stator ux in aligned and unaligned positions of the rotor. Data sheet of the SRM is presented in Table I.

III. OTHER MEASUREMENT METHODS in (1). The waveform of the stator current is used also for the computation of the SRM phase inductance. The current wave should be further processed to reject the noise it contains. The processing could be performed in two ways. There are two other methods for the evaluation of the SRM inductance: one through direct experiments, e.g., voltage versus current test, and the other through numerical simulation, e.g., by a nite-element method (FEM).

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Fig. 5. Circuit for measurement of the phase inductance.

Fig. 6. Simulation of the SRM for operation in the generator mode. Data sheet of the SRM is presented in Table I.

A. Voltage Versus Current Test Traditionally, the inductance of an electromagnetic device is measured by performing the voltage versus current test. For example, the ac mains voltage is applied to the terminal of a SRM through an autotransformer (see Fig. 5). The root-mean-square (rms) values of the applied voltage, , and the phase current, , are measured. The phase inductance could be estimated from and mains frequency . (4), while the phase resistance is (4) The value of is obtained by performing a prior dc test of the SRM. The experimental results obtained by the voltage versus current measurements are presented in Fig. 8. The voltage versus current test of SRM has two principal disadvantages. First, SRM is a pulse-fed device. Therefore, the magnitude of the peak phase current could be 35 times the rms value of the phase current. It is shown (see Fig. 6) that A, but is only 2.55 A [4]. Furthermore,

Fig. 7. Simulation of the voltage versus current test of the SRM. (a) The instantaneous value of the phase current. Dotted line present rms value of the phase current. (b) The instantaneous value of the phase inductance. Dotted line presents measured value of the phase inductance. Data sheet of the SRM is presented in Table I.

the SRM operates through a strong magnetic saturation of the stator yoke. Therefore, it is important to know the magnitudes of the phase inductance for all the range of the phase current, until its peak value. However, measurements performed by voltage versus current test with could heat and even damage the SRM. Secondly, the set of the phase inductance corresponding to a set of rms values of the phase current does not reect the dependence of the phase inductance on the instantaneous value of the phase current. It is shown in Fig. 7 that the phase inductance changes its magnitude during the voltage versus current test, according to the instantaneous value of the phase current. However, the voltage versus current test could provide valuable results in the low-current region, while the magnetic saturation of the stator yoke is not yet present. Therefore, it would be possible in very simple way to validate the experimental results obtained by the present one-pulse test method or simulation results obtained by the FEM.

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phase current. The instantaneous value of the phase inductance in the SRM could be measured by the proposed new method, the one-pulse test. Furthermore, the experimental results are compared with simulation results obtained by FEM. ACKNOWLEDGMENT This work was supported by The Paul Ivanier Center for Robotics Research and Production Management. REFERENCES
[1] T. J. E. Miller, Switched Reluctance Motors and Their Control. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon, 1993. [2] I. Boldea and S. A. Nasar, Electric Drive. Boca Raton, FL: CRC, 1999. [3] V. K. Sharma, S. S. Murthy, and B. Singh, An improved method for the determination of saturation characteristics of switched reluctance motors, IEEE Trans. Instrum. Meas., vol. 48, no. 5, pp. 9951000, Oct. 1999. [4] N. Radimov, N. Ben-Hail, and R. Rabinovici, Switched reluctance machines as three-phase AC autonomous generator, in Proc. 2003 IEEE Int. Electric Machines and Drives Conf., Madison, WI, Jun. 2003. [5] M. V. K. Chari and P. P. Silvester, Finite Elements in Electrical and Magnetic Field Problem. New York: Wiley, 1980. [6] W. Wu, J. B. Dunlop, S. J. Collocott, and B. A. Kalan, Design optimization of a switched reluctance motor by electromagnetic and thermal nite-element analysis, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 39, no. 5, pp. 33343336, Sep. 2003. [7] T. J. E. Miller, Optimal design of switched reluctance motors, IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron., vol. 49, no. 1, pp. 1527, Feb. 2002.

Fig. 8. Results of measurements of the phase inductance of the SRM. Dashed lines present results of the voltage versus current test. Solid lines present results of the one-pulse test. Dotted lines present results of the numerical simulations by FEM. Data sheet of the SRM is presented in Table I.

B. Simulations by FEM The simulation by FEM [5] could be considered as an alternative way to get the SRM parameters. It does not require life tests, but only computer calculations. FEM simulations require complete information about the geometrical parameters of SRM. It could be used as a prior stage during the development of the electromechanical system. Generally, a two-dimensional (2-D) FEM solver is used, due to its low price and convenience [6]. Therefore, the SRM is modeled as innitely long. Hence, the end effect, which could be quite important especially in the unaligned position, would not be possible to be estimated [1], [7]. Another important problem is felt during the computation by FEM: the thickness of the air gap could be rather different in practice then that is given in the SRM data sheets. It is shown in Fig. 8 that for the aligned position, in the region of negligible magnetic saturation, e.g., small phase currents, due to the difference between the presumed and the real air gap, there is a signicant difference between the values of the phase induction measured by the voltage versus current test and the one-pulse test versus those calculated by FEM. On the other hand, there is a quite good correlation between the results provided by the two experimental methods for this region of linear magnetic behavior, as it would be expected. Furthermore, the one-pulse test shows a reduction of the SRM inductivity for the low magnetic elds, which are close to zero. This is quite true; the magnetization curve has a nonlinear region close to zero elds too. It is seen in Fig. 8 that there is a good correlation between the results obtained by the one-pulse test and the FEM in the region of high currents, where the large saturation of the iron yoke makes the air gap thickness less important. IV. CONCLUSION The inductance of electromagnetic devices depends on the instantaneous value of the phase current, under conditions of strong magnetic saturation of the stator yoke. Therefore, it would not be possible to estimate its instantaneous value by measurement of the rms values of the applied voltage and

Manuscript received August 1, 2004; revised January 12, 2005.

Nikolay Radimov was born in Odessa, Ukraine, on February 19, 1976. He received the Eng. degree in electrical engineering from OSAR, Odessa, in 1998 and the M.Sc. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel, in 2004. Presently, he is a Teaching Assistant in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. His research interests are switched-reluctance machines, electric drives, autonomous reluctance generators, noise and vibration of electric machinery, and power electronics.

Natan Ben-Hail was born in Shiraz, Iran, on August 6, 1954. He received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Pahlavi University, Shiraz, and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel. He teaches electrical technology at Beer-Sheva College of Technology, BeerSheva.

Raul Rabinovici (M83SM97) was born in Romania in 1950. He established in Israel in 1979. He graduated as an electrical engineer from The Polytechnic Institute of Jassy, Romania, in 1972, and received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel, in 1987. He is currently an Associate Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Over the past ten years, his principal eld of interest has been electric drives, including electric machines, power electronic drivers, and DSP operation and control algorithms. Prof. Rabinovici was a member of the Editorial Board of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS between 1996 and 1998. He is a member of the International Steering Committee of the OPTIM Conference, Brasov, Romania, and a member of the Editorial Board of JEE, an Internet Journal on Electrical Engineering.