Rotor position monitoring of a reluctance drive
AssigneeSwitched Reluctance Drives Limited
InventorPeter Mark Moriarty
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Abstract
A reluctance drive includes a stator, a phase winding (16) on the stator, a rotor (12) that is movable relative to the stator, a controller for applying a current to the phase winding (13), and a sensor for measuring the phase current in the winding (16). Aspects of the invention detect when the phase current has passed its peak, compute when the peak phase current occurred using information on when the phase current passed its peak, determine rotor position using the computed position of the peak phase current.
Claims25
A method for sensorless determination of rotor position in a reluctance drive comprising a rotor with a plurality of rotor poles and a stator with a plurality of stator poles, the poles of one of the rotor and stator being provided with windings defining a plurality of phases, the method comprising:
- sampling phase current within a conduction period of a phase,
- detecting when the phase current within the conduction period has passed its peak,
- computing when the peak phase current occurred using information on when the phase current passed its peak, and
- determining rotor position using the computed peak current.
A reluctance drive with sensorless determination of rotor position, comprising:
- a stator,
- a rotor that is movable relative to the stator,
- a phase winding on one of the stator and rotor, the phase winding defining a phase,
- a controller for applying a current to the phase winding,
- means for measuring phase current in the winding within a conduction period of the phase,
- means for detecting when the phase current within the conduction period has passed its peak,
- means for computing when the peak phase current occurred using information on when the phase current passed its peak, and
- means for computing rotor position using the computed position of the peak phase current.
A computer program, on a data carrier or other computer-readable medium, for sensorless determination of rotor position in a reluctance machine, the computer program having instructions for controlling sampling of phase current within a conduction period of a phase of the reluctance machine, detecting when the phase current within the conduction period has passed its peak, computing when the peak phase current occurred using information on when the phase current passed its peak and determining rotor position using the computed peak phase current.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.