Position sensorless control with accelerometer for linear and curvilinear synchronous motor

In the field of the manufacturing industry, it has been often discussed that high-mix low-volume manufacturing is required to meet a variety of customer needs. In such a situation, cellular manufacturing and U shaped production lines are often adopted. Linear synchronous motors (LSMs) are appropriate to realize U shaped automation lines because of its strong features such as flexibility of layout, high efficiency and position control performance. However, a problem seems to lie in the fact that LSMs need a position sensor which is expensive and has less durability. For this reason, the position sensorless control for LSMs is required. In addition, the method should be easy to apply to all kinds of LSMs. Specifically, the method should require no saliency and be apply to a LSM which has a complex track including curvilinear section. Based on such a background, this paper presents a position estimation method for a Linear and Curvilinear Synchronous Motor with an accelerometer which is inexpensive and easy to attach to LSMs. As the proposed method in this paper does not require any motor saliency, it can be quickly applied to all LSMs. In this paper, the proposed method is shown and verified by experimental results.