Résumé : Policies to reduce emissions from transportation are implemented by different World and European

associations. Personal and freight transportation is one of the key contributors in GHG

emissions, being the second biggest GHG emitter after energy sector in the European Union.

The policies to reduce emissions from transportation are focusing on the optimization of the efficiency

of the existing vehicles, the development of new sustainable fuels and propulsion systems

and the electrification of the vehicles

The continuously increasing price of the permanent magnets and the shortage of rare earths

demand the finding of alternatives for the permanent magnet synchronous machines which is

currently the leading technology in several domains as hybrid and full electric propulsion and

wind turbines due to their best overall performances.

The good efficiency and the large constant power-speed ratio in addition to low the cost, high

reliability and fault-tolerance make the SRM a candidate with real chances on the market of

vehicle propulsion. The main drawbacks of the SRM related to the torque ripple, noise and

vibration make the research object in R&Ds all over the world.

This thesis is focused on the development of an efficient and robust switched reluctance drive

which can be integrated in a hybrid dive train or can be solely used for electric vehicle traction.

To achieve this goal, various instantaneous and average torque control techniques are implemented

and compared. A converter is designed, built and integrated on a test bench which

allows testing SRMs for vehicle propulsion. An investigation on noise production in SRDs ends

the thesis.