Model-Free Predictive Current Control for an Improved Transverse-Flux Flux-Reversal Linear Motor

One of the significant features of the transverse flux linear motors (TFLMs) is the relatively higher thrust density, since the main flux loop of TFLM is located on a perpendicular plane to the motion direction. As one type of reluctance TFLM, the transverse-flux flux-reversal linear motor (TF-FRLM) is an interesting topology for the long stroke scene, which owns a passive reluctance type secondary, and the high-priced permanent magnets are only fixed on the short primary. To further enhance the practicality of the TF-FRLM, this paper focuses on the topology improvement and the control methods of TF-FRLM. Based on an improved TF-FRLM, a model-free predictive current control (MFPCC) method with suppressed sampling noise is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the details of structural improvements on the TF-FRLM topology are described, and some typical performances of TF-FRLMs are simulated by the three-dimensional finite element method and tested by a prototype. Then, based on the proposed basic principle of MFPCC, the reference current for inner-loop control is predicted. To ensure the prediction accuracy of the current in the MFPCC control method, the average filtering principle is used to suppress the impact of current sampling noise on performance. Finally, through comparative experiments on MFPCC schemes on the prototype platform, the effectiveness of the proposed control method is verified.