Effect of minimum energy control on steel loss in VR stepper motor

This research presents a 3D FE method for the simulation of the variable reluctance stepper motor dynamics. The proposed model is used to obtain the optimal minimum energy control law that minimizes the energy injected by the controller. The method is based on the strong coupling of field - circuit equations and extended to eddy current, motion and nonlinearity problem. The linearization technique for the coupled problem is presented. Also the lamination of the motor core is considered. In the paper the open - loop control problem is analyzed. The proposed model is validated by the comparison with measurements. Next, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed optimal minimum energy control method is applied. In both cases, the examination of the variable reluctance stepper motor dynamics and the steel loss in the core is presented and compared.