Simulation and practical studies of doubly-fed reluctance drives operation and control

The doubly-fed reluctance machine is a viable substitute for the widely used wound rotor doubly-fed induction machine (DFIM) in adjustable speed slip power recovery applications (e.g. pump-type drives, high-inertia loads, wind turbines etc.). It may offer competitive performance to DFIM at equally low capital expenditure by adopting a similar fractional converter, but contributing further with much reduced operation and maintenance costs of reliable brushless construction and a simpler, more compact, rugged 2-stage gearbox. The comparative simulation results for the two robust angular velocity and power factor control schemes executed in flux and/or voltage vector oriented reference frames have been experimentally validated on a custom-built prototype for variable loading characteristics.