Investigation of Winding Configurations and Their General Model in Doubly Salient Reluctance Machines

Three winding configurations of classic doubly salient reluctance machines (DSRMs) are investigated, and a general winding model is established to identify their slot pitch angle, star plot of flux-linkage phasors, winding factor, and so on. Consequently, the analytical comparisons of conventional DSRMs (C-DSRMs), mutually coupled DSRMs (MC-DSRMs), and fully pitched DSRMs (FP-DSRMs) can be unified, providing general guidelines for preliminary design and assessment of DSRMs. The finite element (FE) method is employed to validate the theoretical analysis on various DSRMs with different slot/pole number combinations. It is revealed that the torque capabilities of DSRMs can be positively indicated by winding factors under sinusoidal excitation conditions. As a result, the FP-DSRMs generally exhibit higher torques with sinusoidal currents due to their high winding factors, while the C-DSRMs are advantageous with unipolar square excitations. Finally, a pair of DSRM prototypes are fabricated and tested to verify the above results.