Design study of switched reluctance motor performance

It is shown that different figures of merit applicable to doubly-salient machines can be used with switched reluctance motors (SRMs). This very simplified approach is shown still to have validity in both stepping and SRM design, but caution is needed. The different design recommendations are critically examined and compared with results from full computer models, validated by extensive comparisons with measured behavior from prototype and commercial machines. Different criteria for optimization are used in a practical design study, including loss constraints. Torque optimization without loss constraints produces maxima which accord well with the figure of merit correctly based on a nonlinear magnetization curve. An important aspect of this study is the introduction of corrections for core loss, based on an empirical formula.<>