Construction and testing of a battery driven variable-reluctance drive inverter / Ambrose Yahya Fenner

This thesis describes the construction and testing of a new battery driven variable reluctance (VR) drive inverter. The motor being brushless and robust is a good replacement for conventional D.C. motor that has commutator and brushes that effectively limit its operating life to a few hundreds of hours. The cost of VR drive, however, increases with its phase number with the single-phase VR drive being the cheapest. This thesis discusses the operation of a single-phase VR inverter that operates a pseudo two-phase VR motor to achieve reliable starting at low cost. Only one active switch is required in this inverter. The.thesis reports both simulation and experimental performance data of the drive. The simulation and experimental results correlate reasonably well.