Optimum design of highly efficient magnet assisted reluctance motor

Permanent magnet motors have attracted a lot of attention for their potential energy saving. However, they are only used for certain applications because of expensive magnets. This paper discusses the optimum design of the low cost and highly efficient magnet assisted reluctance motors with a minimum amount of magnets. The motor considered in this study is a multi-flux barrier reluctance motor with assisted permanent magnets. The configuration by which permanent magnets are embedded to the innermost side of the rotor to obtain maximum output with the minimum amount of magnets was evaluated through simulation and experiments with a prototype motor. As a result, we established a method for designing motors capable of realizing the same efficiency as permanent magnet motors with only one-fourth the amount of magnets. In our experiments, we achieved a high efficiency of 94.4% with a 750 W motor.