Cost-effective Design for high efficiency synchronous reluctance motor

In recent years, increased concern with environment sustainability and reduction of energy consumption has made the development of high efficiency motors more important. Many types of motors are being developed towards higher efficiency in order to meet the standards such as the Super Premium efficiency IE4 - published by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). This includes induction motors, whose stator and rotor copper losses make them difficulty to achieve high efficiency. Permanent magnet motors can easily achieve high efficiency, but the cost is also high due to the expensive rare-earth magnet. Synchronous reluctance motors (SynRM) have now drawn more and more attention and are a potential competitor to induction motors. It also has the advantages of low manufacture cost and magnet free. This digest develops a rotor design process to improve the torque density and efficiency for SynRM through magnetic circuit analysis and the developed integrated approach associated with finite element analysis (FEA). Attempt is also made to use different electrical steels for the stator and rotor to achieve the goal of better performance with less cost. A prototype SynRM is then designed and tested.