Optimisation techniques for a hysteresis current controller to minimise torque ripple in switched reluctance motors

The switched reluctance (SR) motor has many benefits owing to its low cost, simple design, rugged construction and comparatively high torque-to-mass ratio. Unlike DC and induction motors, the SR motor is intended to operate in deep magnetic saturation to increase the output power density. Because of the saturation effect and the variation of magnetic reluctance with respect to rotor position, all the relevant characteristics of the machine are highly non-linear functions of both rotor position and phase current. The ultimate outcome of all these non-linearities is that the generated torque contains significant ripples. The non-linearities in the SR motor have been extensively studied and many control strategies to reduce the generated torque ripples have been proposed in the literature. Modulation of phase current profile for generating torque in the SR motor with minimum ripples was the focus of most of the research. However, the main challenge to minimise the torque ripple is to design a current controller that is able to track the modulated phase current. In this work, new techniques to optimise the widely used hysteresis current controller are studied, and experimental verifications under closed-loop speed control with the modulated reference current data are presented. The experimental results indicate that the torque ripple is reduced to lie within 5% of the desired steady torque using the proposed optimisation techniques.