New sensorless vector control of synchronous reluctance motors through estimation of phase-inclusion flux by generalized flux estimation method

This paper proposes three new rotor phase estimation methods for sensorless drives of synchronous reluctance motors (SynRMs). The methods can estimate the phase of positive or negative salient poles without errors as a rotor phase by using the generalized flux estimation algorithm. The algorithm was originally developed for estimating the rotor flux of PMSMs with permanent magnet in the rotor. Even though SynRMs do not have rotor flux at all, this paper succeeds in applying the algorithm to phase estimation problem of SynRMs by segmenting the stator reaction flux into “in-phase flux” and “phase-inclusion flux.” The former does not have rotor phase information, but the latter does. The algorithm is applied to estimating the phase-inclusion flux out of the stator flux. The effectiveness and usefulness of the proposed methods are verified through extensive simulations. © 2019 The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan.