LAUSR

A synchronous reluctance motor drive exhibits an inherent unlimited speed range capability; in fact, the maximum speed of this kind of machine is bounded only by mechanical limits. In order to exploit this peculiar characteristic of the drive while assuring the lowest power losses, a proper control algorithm has to be used. In particular, while the working speed is increasing, the control must be able to command the reluctance motor under the maximum torque per ampere condition at first, into the flux-weakening region, and then on the maximum torque per voltage trajectory. To this purpose, a novel voltage control loop is presented in this paper. It is combined with a field-oriented current control and profitably exploits a polar coordinate representation of the current reference to operate the reluctance machine in compliance with current and voltage rating constraints in all the different operating conditions. Additional merits of the proposed scheme are the ease of implementation and the simple design. The stability of the proposed control algorithm is proved through a small signal analysis and simulations and experimental tests confirm its effectiveness.