Position sensorless control of switched reluctance motor

Switched Reluctance Motors (SRM) are electric machines which come to the fore with their simplicity and low cost. There isn't any magnets on stators and rotors of SRM, but only there is copper windings on stator poles. They resemble to step motors. There are two ways of controlling SRM. First one is sensored control and the second one is sensorless control. In sensored control, position encoder determines rotor position and assists powering proper phase windings. In sensorless control, there is no way to find out exact rotor position. But estimation of position can be done. Therefore, unique magnetic charestics of SRM are using for phase triggering. In this thesis firstly, literature research is achieved. Then basics of SRM are given. Reference flux method compared with most used sensorless control methods by explaining them. The electrical model of SRM is created in Mathworks MATLAB/Simulink software by using datas gathered from ANSYS Maxwell. By adding reference flux algorithm blocks to this model, open loop control is simulated. Then closed loop control simulated by adding angular velocity estimation algorithm. Finally, experimental setup of SRM is designed. The experimental setup of SRM consists of SRM, load motor, transformer, DC power source, IGBT driving circuit, power circuit, snubber circuit, filtered voltage divider and FPGA. As a result, the reference flux based sensorless control method is practicable and cost effective solution for open loop applications especially. For closed loop applications, it is predicted that the efficiency of the method will increase when torque ripple is decreased. Therefore, it is suggested that different control algorithms must be used.