A comparison between transverse flux and conventional switched reluctance machines

Conventional switched reluctance motors have been extensively researched over the last two decades, predominantly with regard to acoustic noise production, torque ripple minimization, and converter volt-ampere reduction. Whilst there have been some electromagnetic advances, these have been associated with the details of the design and there has been very little work looking at entirely alternative magnetic geometries. Hoop winding configurations have been developed for very small stepping motors, but not for switched reluctance motors because of the complication of building a laminated magnetic circuit for this type of geometry. The emergence and improvements of powdered iron prompted this research A prototype machine has been designed and tested and then compared to a similar size conventional machine with short-pitched windings, highlighting the relative merits of this machine configuration, which exhibits a large increase in torque per unit copper mass and a more modest increase in torque per unit total mass.