Direct Model Predictive Control of Synchronous Reluctance Motor Drives

This paper investigates a finite-control set model-predictive control (FCS-MPC) algorithm to enhance the performance of a synchronous reluctance machine drive. Particular emphasis is placed on the definition of the cost function enabling a computationally light implementation while targeting good transient and steady-state performance. In particular, this work proposes the inclusion of an integral term into the cost function to ensure zero steady-state errors thus compensating for any model inaccuracies. A control effort term is also considered in the formulation of the cost function to achieve a high ratio between the sampling frequency and the average switching frequency. After a comprehensive simulation study showing the advantages of the proposed approach over the conventional FCS-MPC for a wide range of operating conditions, several experimental test results are reported. The effectiveness of the proposed control approach, including a detailed analysis of the effect of the load and speed variations, is thus fully verified providing useful guidelines for the design of a direct model predictive controller of synchronous reluctance motor drives.