Cutting and punching impacts on laminated electromagnetic steels to the designs and operations of synchronous reluctance motors

This paper is aimed to provide the detailed design and operational investigations of synchronous reluctance motors (SRM) that are commonly assembled by laminated electromagnetic steels. The magnetic flux paths in the SRM rotors with various barrier and segment compositions will be analyzed, along with the generated motor torque and loss assessments. As the related mechanical cutting and/or punching processes on the rotor steels are required to achieve desired direct- and quadrature-axis reluctance ratios, their impacts to the flux paths due to saturations will also be thoroughly evaluated. Assisted by three-dimensional finite element analyses, the results clearly indicated that the additional annealing process on the electromagnetic steel strips must be introduced for these SRM designs with smaller sizes and higher efficiency requirements.