Small-signal finite-element modeling of synchronous machines for sensorless applications

This paper presents a novel strategy to compute the high-frequency signal injection response of an electrical machine adopted in a sensorless electric drive. Thanks to the proposed strategy the self-sensing capability of the machine can be evaluated during the design process. A small-signal model of the machine in the d-q reference frame is derived and adopted to perform suitable finite-element (FE) simulation to compute the machine parameters at the injection frequency. The proposed procedure is validated by the comparison with other simulation strategies as well as with experimental results.