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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 41, NO. 4, APRIL 2005

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 finite-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

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of a 6/4-pole SRM.

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 flux linkage in the SRM phase could be estimated from the experimental data as follows:

(1)

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMAG.2005.844835

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.

Here is the voltage across the stator phase, is the stator

is the SRM phase resistance. Results of the flux
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 first processed to reject the dc bias of the
oscilloscope. The waveform of the phase voltage is used only

0018-9464/$20.00 2005 IEEE

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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 filter as follows:
(2)

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.

The filter yields the average value of the input signal over a
period . The period is chosen quite small but sufficient 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 flux 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

(3)
where are the coefficients of the polynomial that approximate
versus the phase current I. In this
the phase flux 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 refinement 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 flux 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 rectifier 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 flux 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 finite-element method (FEM).

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 41, NO. 4, APRIL 2005

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 reflect 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

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 infinitely 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
significant 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
fields, which are close to zero. This is quite true; the magnetization curve has a nonlinear region close to zero fields 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

[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 finite-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.

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 field 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.