Position control of a novel planar switched reluctance motor

This paper presents the position control of a novel 2D switched reluctance (SR) planar motor. The planar motor consists of a 6-coil moving platform, and a flat stator base made from laminated mild steel blocks. Unlike conventional X-Y tables, which stack two moving slides on top of each other, the proposed 2D planar motor has the advantages of simple mechanical construction, high reliability, and is able to withstand harsh operating conditions. Together with the two linear encoders attached to the X and Y axes, the motor can be controlled under closed loop mode. To combat the problem of force nonlinearity, this paper proposes a cascade controller with force linearization technique to implement the drive controller. Due to the unique structure of the magnetic circuit, there is very little coupling between the X- and Y-axis, and no decoupling compensation is needed. Preliminary control results show that the proposed VR planar driver has a positional accuracy of 5 microns and an acceleration/deceleration rate of 2G.