Development of a front-end converter for switched-reluctance motor drive

A two-quadrant front-end converter to power switched-reluctance motor (SRM) drive and its control are presented in this paper. The proposed front-end converter can be operated as a DC/DC boost converter to establish well-regulated and boosted DC-link voltage for SRM drive from battery. The control of boost converter is realized using the same digital signal processor (DSP) of SRM drive. A proportional type controller is properly designed, and the PWM boosting switching control signal is generated by the embedded auxiliary PWM channel in DSP. In an idle case, the proposed front-end converter can be arranged to act as a buck-type switch-mode rectifier for charging the battery with good line power quality. Four diodes embedded in the SRM converter are employed to form the bridge rectifier of the SMR. And the two rotor position-dependent winding inductances are served as the AC input filter components during each half cycle. Some experimental results are provided to evaluate the performance of the proposed front-end converter and the SRM drive