Optimization of a Switched Reluctance Motor Made of Permendur

A switched reluctance (SR) motor has a doubly salient pole structure. A stator has concentrated windings on each pole, while a rotor is only made of iron core. Therefore, the SR motor is expected as a low cost, extremely robust, variable speed motor. The performance of the SR motor greatly depends on magnetic properties of core material since it consists of only laminated-core and windings. This paper investigates the performance of an SR motor made of permendur which has extremely high saturation flux density and very low core loss. Motor torque, iron loss, and efficiency of the SR motor are estimated by finite element method (FEM). Furthermore, a suitable structure for the SR motor made of permendur is examined based on the design of experiments.