A new switched reluctance motor drive using passive network for marine propulsion

Switched reluctance (SR) motors have high power density, high efficiency, high reliability, high fault tolerance, and low manufacturing cost. Thus, these motors have a high potential than other machines such as permanent magnet brushless motor, high-temperature super conductor motor, etc.; hence, it is well-suited for electric marine propulsion. This paper presents a new power converter and analyses three-phase SR drive using hysteresis current control (HCC). The proposed converter consists three diodes and one capacitor to the front end of a conventional asymmetric converter in order to get a high demagnetisation voltage. The introduction of passive components into the conventional converter, which causes high demagnetization voltage. In the proposed converter the dc link voltage appear across the terminal of the converter side in parallel mode and twice the DC-link voltage appear in series mode. The high demagnetisation voltage reduces the negative torque production from the tail current is minimised, which improves the output power. When passive components are combined with the conventional converter, the phase winding attains DC-link voltage in parallel mode during the energizing period and the negative double DC-link voltage in the energization period. The mode of operation of the proposed converter are analysed for three-phase SR motor. The proposed converter is simulated by MATLAB/SIMULINK.The results revealed that the proposed converter gives better performance than the conventional converter.