A Fast Estimation of the Initial Rotor Position of Synchronous Reluctance Motors

This paper proposes a new technique for estimating the initial rotor position of synchronous reluctance motors, which takes advantage of the magnetic anisotropy of the machine. The method is based on a particular supply voltage pattern which allows the computation of the initial rotor position by measuring the value of the phase currents and their derivates with a stationary rotor. The study is applied to a prototype of a 3kW synchronous reluctance motor with a flux barrier rotor. Both realistic simulations (accounting for the non-linear machine behavior) and experimental tests show the error between the estimated initial position and the effective one.