Comparison of Converter Control Strategies for a Switched Reluctance Machine

This paper presents an objective comparison of two converter types used with a 4-phase 8/6 switched reluctance motor (SRM) drive after a detailed analysis of its operation by modeling the drive in Simulink/MATLAB environment. The converters considered are asymmetrical half bridge converter (AHBC) with two different control strategies namely strategy 1 (st1) and strategy 2 (st2) and variable DC link converter (VDC). The complete system is simulated to assess the performance of the drive under different operating conditions to bring out the effectiveness of these converters and control strategies during both steady-state and dynamic operations. The turn-on and turn-off angles for the phases of the SRM have been chosen judiciously to achieve excellent responses for speed, torque and current. The drive performance, in terms of torque and current pulsations, settling time, etc., has been compared for starting condition, speed and torque perturbations.