Development and precise positioning control of a thin and compact linear switched reluctance motor

This paper describes the development and precise positioning control of a thin and compact linear switched reluctance motor (LSRM). The LSRM that has been developed has a mover that is easy to fabricate and can be disposable. The mover can be easily separated from the stator, allowing it to be changed frequently or discarded in a hazardous application. The prototyped LSRM mover is only 0.128 mm thick with the stator measuring 2.0 mm at its thickest point. These features are highly desirable for space savings while being cost-effective. However, the LSRM has a strong nonlinear driving characteristic that presents a challenge with respect to precision control. In order to overcome this problem and achieve precision positioning, a linearizer unit was designed and integrated into the controller to compensate for the nonlinear relationships among the effective thrust force, mover position, and excitation current. The usefulness of the designed controller was examined experimentally. The experimental positioning results show that the steady-state errors were all less than 1 μm in the working range of the LSRM. In addition, the redesign for the improvement of thrust characteristic and easy fabrication of the LSRM is explained.