Electrical braking with improved energy regeneration in induction machine drive

Electric traction can be considered as one of the promising technologies towards significant improvements in performance & efficiency of vehicle, energy utilization and polluting emissions. The induction machine (IM) is usually selected as work horse of traction industry because of its most suitable torque-speed characteristics. In the present context the regenerative braking is considered to be a promising aspect so as to restore back the energy wasted during the braking process. An analysis of the IM torque-speed characteristics shows that it is possible to obtain higher braking torque with more power being fed back in the generating mode in contrast to the braking mode. Thus a new simplified methodology has been proposed to extract the power from the wheels into the battery by operating the IM in the generating mode even while the brakes are applied.