Intermittent control for efficiency gain of a switched reluctance machine

This paper presents the intermittent control applied on a switched reluctance machine (SRM) in electric vehicle application. The purpose is to increase the global efficiency of the system comprising the SRM and its power converter in order to extend the vehicle autonomy. First, the machine and its converter are shortly presented. The classical indirect average torque control is briefly reviewed with its efficiency cartography. Then, the principle of the intermittent control is deduced and the realization is also developed from the classical control structure. Specifically, with the purpose of maintaining the required average total torque, the intermittent control imposes a higher reference phase torque that has a higher efficiency during a shorter time. The achieved simulation results prove that this strategy can be realized within the SRM structure and can reduce the losses.