Design of a high speed interior claw synchronous reluctance machine

Abstract

Synchronous reluctance machine (SynRM) is one of the candidates of high-speed application drives. The rotor of this machine, as the most important and most challenging part of the design, has various tangential and radial ribs. Therefore, the quantity, thickness and length of the ribs are significant SynRM design parameters. If ribs' thickness is increased in order to enhance the mechanical robustness, its magnetic properties will be substantially deteriorated and vice versa. In this paper, by employing interior claws, a new rotor for SynRM is designed in a way that while increasing the mechanical robustness of the rotor for high speeds application, its magnetic characteristics enhanced, too. For this purpose, the proposed design method is applied on a two-flux barrier rotor of a 24 stator slot SynRM. The designed machine electromagnetic performance is evaluated by finite elements method (FEM) simulation and compared with other designs. Also, the mechanical strength of the proposed rotor with two alternative claws for the speeds up to 50krpm are evaluated and confirmed by structural FE analysis. At the end, the designed interior claw rotor is prototyped and tested. Prototyped SynRM magnetic characteristics that are extracted by experiment confirmed simulations results with acceptable accuracy.