Advantages of switched reluctance motor applications to EV and HEV: Design and control issues

Land vehicles need their drivetrain to operate entirely in constant power in order to meet their operational constraints, such as initial acceleration and gradability, with minimum power rating, The internal combustion engine (ICE) is inappropriate for producing this torque-speed profile, Therefore, multiple gear transmission is necessary with the ICE in a vehicle, Some electric machines, if designed and controlled appropriately, are capable of producing an extended constant power range. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the capabilities of the switched reluctance motor (SRM) for electric vehicle and hybrid electric vehicle applications. This investigation will be carried out in two steps, The first step involves the machine design and the finite-element analysis to obtain the static characteristic of the motor. In the second step, the finite-element field solutions are used in the development of a nonlinear model to investigate the dynamic performance of the designed motor, Several 8-6 and 6-4 SRM geometries,will be investigated, Effects of different stator and rotor pole widths and pole heights on the steady state as well as on the dynamic performance of the motor will be studied, The air gap for each motor will be made as small as manufacturally possible. The aspects of performance to be compared for each design motor are: 1) the range of the constant power operation; 2) drive efficiency in this extended constant power range; 3) the power factor in this operational range; and 4) the short time overload capability, The first performance index defines the rated power of the motor. The longer the constant power range, the lower is the power rating for the same vehicle performance. Hence, special emphasis will be given to this. In the high-speed operation of the SRM, there will be considerable phase overlapping. Hence, thicker back iron than usual might be needed to prevent the back iron from saturating. However, since flux peaking of each phase occurs at different rotor positions, the phase overlapping might not necessitate special designing of the back iron. However, the possibility of the back iron being saturated will not be neglected and will be investigated. The optimal control parameters of the SRM, which maximize the constant power range with maximum torque per ampere, will, be calculated. A performance comparison will be made for this optimal operation. Simulation results of the designed SRM will be presented for vehicle acceleration. To demonstrate the capability of the SRM in producing an extended constant power range, experimental results will be presented, however, for a reduced size motor available commercially.