Performance Analysis of Six-Phase Segmented SRM Considering the Effect of Punching

Switched Reluctance Machines are a topology of electrical machine that can be used in Electric Vehicles (EV) without reliance on rare earth Permanent Magnet (PM) for high torque production. Their performance depends heavily on the material properties of the rotor and stator, which is known to be influenced by manufacturing technique. In this paper, the effect of the lamination punching process on the performance of a six-phase Segmented Switch Reluctance Motor (SSRM) is investigated in terms of iron loss, torque profile, and efficiency. A degradation model is defined for the magnetization curve and core loss model of the electrical steel laminations. A circuit coupled Finite Element (FE) model is utilized to extract the optimum phase advance and switching condition of the six-phase SSRM for accurate calculation of the torque. The results indicate that considering the punching process leads to a 1.91% and 2.71% reduction in the average torque and efficiency, respectively. Therefore, it is recommended to consider this effect at the design stage of SSRM machines.