Modeling and Simulation of

Switched Reluctance Machine

Dr.V.Kamaraj
Asst. Professor
Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering
Sriperumbudur

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 Introduction
 The features of Switched Reluctance Machine SRM

 Poles, Phases and windings

 The principle of operation

 Torque equation

 Structure of the converter

 Simulation for performance evaluation

 Conclusions

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 Features of SRM
– The Switched Reluctance Motor
■ Doubly-Salient, Singly-Excited motor
■ Poles on both rotor and stator
■ Only stator carries windings
■ The rotor has no windings, magnets,or cage winding
■ Rotor is simply a stack of salient pole laminations
– Advantage
■ The rotor is simple, requires relatively few manufacturing steps and
tends to have a low inertia.
■ The stator is simple to wind
■ The bulk of the losses occur in the stator part and is easy to cool
down
■ Because there are no magnets the maximum permissible rotor
temperature may be higher than in PM macines

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Continued-
» The torque is independent of the polarity of phase current. This
permits a reduction in the number of power semiconductor
switches needed in the controller
» Under fault conditions the open circuit voltage and short circuit
current are zero or very small
» Without excessive inrush current high starting current is possible
» Extremely high speeds are possible
» The toque/speed characteristics can be tailored to the application
requirement
» Low material cost
– Disadvantages
» Per unit copper loss high
» Torque ripple and acoustic noise

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Poles,Phases and windings

» The basic rules constraining the choice of number of poles,pole

arcs and phase numbers were expounded by Lawrensen (1980)
» The relationship between speed and fundamental frequency

f 1= n N r = rpm/60 Nr Hz

N - speed in rev/sec
N r - the number of rotor poles
If q-number of phases then q Nr steps per revolution and the step
angle is
ε = 360 / q Nr

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 Constraints on the pole
 The number of stator poles exceeds the number of stator poles.

 Let βr –rotor pole arcβs –stator pole arc.

 min{βr, βs}= β

 To produce unidirectional torque β > ε

 In order to get the largest possible variation of phase inductance with rotor
position, the inter polar arc of the rotor must exceed the stator pole arc.

 This Leads to the condition 2π / Nr- βr > βs .

 The stator pole arc is made slightly smaller than the rotor pole arc.

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 Lawrensen Feasible Triangle
– The constraints on the pole
arcs can be expressed by
Lawrensen feasible Triangle

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 Torque Equation
Consider the primitive SRM.

When current is passed through the phase winding the rotor tends to align
with the stator poles.

Produces a torque that tends to move the rotor to a minimum reluctance

position.

The instantaneous torque is

T= {∂W’/∂θ}I=constant

Where W’ is the coenergy defined as in figure

An equivalent expression is

T= -{∂W/∂θ}ψ=constant
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 Continued
 If magnetic saturation is negligible, then the
relationship between flux linkage and current at
instantaneous rotor position θ is a straight line
whose slope is instantaneous inductance L.

– Thus ψ = L I

– And W’=Wf =1/2 Li 2

– Therefore T=1/2 i 2 d L/dθ

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 Inductance Profile

– The value of the inductance per phase is depending on the

rotor position in the SRM

Lu θ≤0
Lu + kθ 0≤ θ ≤ βs
LPH =
La β s ≤ θ ≤ βr

Lu-k(θ-βr -βs) βs ≤ θ ≤ β r - βs

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 Continued-
– Where
– k= (La -Lu )/β s

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Energy Conversion Loop

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 Continued

– The average torque can be estimated from the energy conversion

loop.
– The electromagnetic energy that is available to be converted into
mechanical work is equal to the area W.
– In one revolution each phase conducts as many strokes as there are
rotor poles so that there are there are q N r strokes or steps per
revolution.
– The average torque therefore is given by
Ta = W * q N r /2π
– The average electromagnetic power converted is
Pe = ω Ta

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Converter Circuits
» The torque is independent of the direction of the current
» Phase current is unidirectioinal
» Unipolar controller circuit.
» The phases are independent
» The upper and lower phase leg are switched on together at the
start of each conduction period
» At the commutation point both are switched off
» During the conduction period either or both of them may be
chopped
» At the end of the conduction period when both switches are
turned off any stored magnetic energy that has not been converted
to mechanical work is returned to the supply by the current free
wheeling through the diodes

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The Need for Computer Modeling
» The switched reluctance motor does not have steady state
» CAD package must incorporate both design and simulation
cpability
» Percentage structure to be modeled
» The Stator Model
» The Rotor Model
» Airgap discretization
» Simulation of rotation
» Boundary Conditions
» Pre-processing and post-processing

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SRM MODEL

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SRM With Skewed Rotor

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SRM 3-D

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