Low-Cost Drive for Switched Reluctance Machine Using Piezoelectric Actuators

Contemporary power electronics designs are based on stationary placement of power switches. Inability to change the terminal connections causes increase in number of switches, corresponding components, and driver circuits. Moreover, most fault tolerant realizations require additional switches (redundancy approach). Hence, the motivation behind this paper is to engineer a solution which can allow for a dynamic circuit topology, thereby alleviating the size, cost, and complexity issues associated with current technology. Dynamic circuit topology refers to a technology that enables making or breaking a connection without disrupting the circuit functionality. This idea embarks a novel set of possibilities such as replacing vulnerable components for increased fault tolerance, multiplexing components to change circuit behavior, and multiplexing circuits between multiple loads. In this paper, electromechanical actuation using piezoelectric materials has been explored for dynamic relocation of one asymmetric bridge to all the phases of a switched reluctance machine, reducing the number of semiconductor switches by a factor of 4. The presented concept can generate new opportunities such as reduced part converter topologies, which can in turn introduce substantial saving in development cost and the required footprint.