A Rotating Restart Method for Scalar (v/f) Controlled Synchronous Reluctance Machine Drives Using a Single DC-Link Current Sensor

Abstract

This paper presents a rotating restart method for v/f scalar controlled Synchronous Reluctance Machines (SynRMs) using a single DC-link current sensor. In such a case, the initial rotor position and speed are required to restart the machine due to the absence of a position sensor. The method proposes to inject three active voltage vectors in the stationary reference frame to induce the phase currents required for estimating the rotor position and speed. In addition, the phase current reconstruction method is proposed to reduce the distortion of the measured phase currents caused by adopting a single DC-link current sensor and to consequently enhance the rotor position estimation accuracy. With the proposed method, the appropriate voltage vector can be applied to the machine, thus minimizing the inrush current during the restart. Furthermore, the proposed method only requires the machine parameters on the nameplate, and it does not require any additional machine-specific tuning processes. This paper proposes a simple restart method suitable for scalar-controlled SynRM drives with a single DC-link current sensor. The effectiveness of the proposed restart scheme is validated through the simulation and experimental results.