Impact of Geometry on the Rotor Iron Losses in Synchronous Reluctance Motors

A parametric analysis is carried out to investigate the dependence of the rotor iron losses on the stator and rotor geometry of several synchronous reluctance machines. Six four-pole rotors have been designed with different flux barriers per pole through a multiobjective differential evolution algorithm coupled to a finite-element analysis (FEA). Two different stators with 24 and 36 slots are considered. During the optimizations, a rapid finite-element evaluation has been used to predict the performance of the motors. After that, an accurate time stepping FEA is used for computation of the rotor iron losses. Finally, the interaction between the rotor iron losses and several rotor and stator geometrical parameters is highlighted. The effect of the current time harmonics have also been taken into account, weighting its impact on the rotor losses.