Enhancing the flux estimation based sensorless speed control for switched reluctance machines

• An enhanced switched reluctance machine sensorless control is reported.
• The power electronics converter is deeply characterized.
• An experimental set-up based on Dspace and FPGA platform has been built.
• Detailed experimental results for speed reversal and load impact are reported.

This paper deals with the sensorless control of switched reluctance machines (SRMs) using the well-known stator flux estimation based technique.The novelty of this paper is the fact that the entire power electronics converter is deeply characterized and the actual voltage applied to the machine is much more accurately estimated. With such power converter nonlinearities compensation, a remarkable impact (larger when lower the SRM voltage) in the stator flux estimation and the sub consequent quality in the angle estimation are clearly achieved. Therefore, the speed range of this sensorless control technique is enlarged towards to the low speed limit.Experimental results are reported, confirming the overall sensorless control good performance for different load and low speed operating conditions.