An In-Wheel Switched Reluctance Motor for
Electric Vehicles
P.C.K. Luk, P. Jinupun
Cranfield University/Department of Aerospace Power and Sensors, Swindon, United Kingdom
email: p.c.k.luk@cranfield.ac.uk
Abstract— An alternative motor technology for electric
drive-trains, in particular in use as an in-wheel drive, is
presented. The technology is based on a simple double
concentric stator structure with a ‘yokeless’ rotor, which
enables the motor to develop constant power with an
extended range much closer to zero speed. A distinct feature
of the new motor, which is based on switched reluctance,
rests on an overlapping magnetic circuitry inherent in the
wheel shape structure, resulting in a smooth but
exceptionally high torque per current capability with
minimum iron losses. Simulation and experimental results
will be present to show the potential applications of the
motor.
Keywords - switched reluctance motors; in-wheel motor;
electric vehicle
I. INTRODUCTION
Although many drive-train schemes have been
proposed for electrically propelled vehicles, the search
for a motor technology that enables the drive-train to
operate more cost-effectively and efficiently, entirely in
constant power to meet operational constraints such as
initial acceleration and climb-ability, has never been
more compelling. To overcome the stringent torque-
speed requirement imposed by these constraints,
conventional ICE uses multiple gear transmission.
Similarly electric drive-trains also invariably resort to
using some mechanical gear system. The potential impact
of the proposed alternative motor technology that can
achieve a near constant power torque-speed characteristic
over a wide speed range extending to standstill condition,
is therefore considerable. This will allow a gearless direct
drive system to be deployed in a future EV, leading to
increased wheel dynamics and drive efficiency. It is felt
that the aim to develop and demonstrate a new motor
technology is mission critical as it offers the electric
vehicle market an attractive and viable alternative, and its
apparent increasing dependence on a permanent magnet
technology. It also fills a technological gap in motor
drives developed by the evolution of two main trends in
the industry, where drives either encompass a relatively
high-cost/sophisticated motor with a relative simple
controller such brushless PM DC drives, or a simple
motor with a sophisticated controller such as advanced
switched reluctance (SR) motor drives or vector control
1-4244-0449-5/06/$20.00 ©2006 IEEE
drives using the induction motor. The radical design of
the proposed motor will result in a drive with a typically
simple SR motor structure and a controller very similar to
that of a brushless DC. It has a unique direct drive
capability that not only removes the gear transmission
and hence significant weight advantage, but also offers
additional agility, controllability and freewheeling
capability that are critical for an independent drive
vehicle. Its intrinsic in-wheel structure is also conducive
to integration at system and component levels.
This paper reports the design of a novel in-wheel SR
motor that has a novel rotor and a stator configuration
that uses substantially less back iron than conventional
types. The consequence of this unique in-wheel
configuration results in an extremely efficient torque
generation mechanism and a very high power density
motor. Simulation and experimental results are presented
to show the potential advantages of the motor over
conventional SR motors.
II. NEW MOTOR CONCEPT
The proposed SRM relies on the fundamental mechanism
of reluctance torque generation in which the motor’s
magnetic saliency is exploited to create alignment torque.
As the stator is electromagnetically energized, the
rotating part moves to restore minimum reluctance or
maximum inductance. The novel feature of the new
motor, however, rests on a unique stator and rotor
configuration that allows flux formation in magnetically
isolated yokeless (no yoke) rotor teeth. Alignment forces
are produced on the rotor teeth located along the
circumference of the yokeless rotor, when flux is
established by yoke-less (less yoke) stator pole pairs.
A. The Rotor/Stator Structure
The unique rotor and stator configuration is shown in
Fig.1. The rotor base is a slotted disk made of light non-
magnetic material. The rotor teeth are housed in the slots
to create a seamless rotor structure. The stator consists of
multiple pairs of horse-shoe shape poles, with each pair
fully aligned with each other but separated by the rim of
the rotor. The yoke-less stator pole-pairs are mounted on
non-magnetic light material similar to that of the rotor
base. Extremely efficient torque generation happens when
selected pole-pairs are energized according to their
IPEMC 2006
 Rotor density. Eqn (1) disguises the complexity of the motor
Rotor
base performance of the motor under saturated and hence
tooth
highly nonlinear condition. No simplified torque
analytical equation may yield satisfactory determination
of the generated torque for the motor, leading to the
preferred use of energy modeling as in Eqn (2), where the
left hand term is the second term of the right hand term of
Eqn (1).

(2)

(a) Yokeless rotor teeth with base rotor where is the instantaneous mechanical power, and
is the instantaneous power, which is stored in the
Stator magnetic field. In this paper, finite element analysis is
used to determine the instantaneous mechanical power
and hence the generated torque as follows [3].

(3)
Rotor

C. Theory of Operation
Although the basic operation theory is similar to
(b) Yoke-less stator core conventional SRMs, the new motor is more like a linear
Fig.1 Conceptual Yokeless SRM
motor in terms of operation, and there are some features
specific to this motor. Fig.2 shows the basic electric drive
circuit and magnetic circuit for a phase winding. The drive
position with the rotor teeth, when the rotor teeth aim to
align with the excited stator pole pairs. The torque
generation is efficient because the forces are created at the
rim of the disc structure, and the magnetic paths are
minimized. So torque is maximized for a given set of
forces, and iron losses are minimized by short magnetic
paths. The main advantage of this structure is very high
torque per unit iron mass can be developed, which makes
the motor ideal for direct drive.

B. Analytical Equations and Modelling

The new motor has a rotor/stator configuration very
different from that of the conventional 6/4 or 8/6
structures. The fundamental torque generation
mechanism is however similar. The instantaneous voltage
across the terminals of a single phase of an SRM winding
is related to the flux linked in the winding by Faraday’s
law, can be developed into the following power
conversion equation.

(1)

where, v is the terminal voltage, i is the phase current, Rm

is the motor resistance, and φ is the flux linked by the
winding. The new motor shares a double salient
construction in the same way as the conventional SRM.
However, the yokeless rotor structure makes it to be
saturated more uniformly, thus increasing its torque Fig.2 Per Phase Driver Circuit
 minimising torque ripples. The sequence of diagrams in
Fig.3 aims to illustrate graphically the switching sequence,
or more precisely the activation sequence as will be seen,
of the stator windings required to develop a smooth and
unidirectional torque to move the rotor to the right. In the
top diagram, excitation current flowing in stator winding
A must be reduced to zero as soon as possible, as further
flow of current will result in pulling the rotor to the left,
i.e. a negative torque to the direction of rotation. Winding
A is therefore finishing activation. At the same time,
winding B is in full activation state as it is the only
winding that can produce the main positive torque.
However, it does not necessarily mean that during this
activation period winding B is fully turned on all the time.
The power switches must control the current into winding
B at a certain level to develop the appropriate torque.

III. SIMULATION RESULTS

A. FEA Results
Finite element analysis (FEA) has been performed based
on the new motor topology for various excitation
Fig.3 Activation Sequence Diagram currents. Fig.4 shows the FEA results and the excitation
sequence of the motor flux over a distance of 100
circuit in Fig.2(a) is a typical per phase power inverter
circuit for the SRM. When the power switches (SWU and
SWL) are on with the same switching signal, current will
flow through the stator winding L from the supply VDC
via the power switches, producing motoring torque and
storing magnetic energy in L. When the power switches
are off, current will continue to flow via the diodes (D1
and D2) back to the supply. Since current flows against
the supply, it will decrease to zero before end of the cycle.
During this period, stored magnetic energy returns to the
supply. However, this apparently simple operation is made
very complex due to the variation of the value of
inductance, due to the excitation current level i and the
position of the moving iron rotor, as illustrated in Fig.2
(b). It should be noted that it is true for SRM in general,
not just for this design. The variation of L is also highly
dependent on the magnetic materials used. Complex
control method is often needed to ensure the correct
profile of excitation current to produce the required torque
level.
Fig.3 shows the switching or activiation sequence,
using a developed diagram. It shows only the upper stator
windings and the rotor in a ‘rolled-out’ form for ease of
illustration. The stator windings are each separated by
250. Thus, in the first diagram of Fig.3, with phase A fully
aligned with the rotor, phase B has an ‘forward’ overlap
zone of 50 with the rotor, and phase C has a ‘backward’
overlap zone of 50. A ‘forward’ overlap will generate a
forward torque (to the right) when excited, and a
‘backward’ overlap will generate retarding torque. The
choice of these overlaps is important in determining the
torque characteristic of the motor, and in particular
Fig.4 FE Results for typical alignment angles
(mechanical) clockwise displacement. A marker is
manually painted on a non-magnetic section the rotor to
help show the displacement clearer. It is noted that a
relatively high average flux level can be achieved at rated
voltage and current level. In Fig.4(a), with the rotor set at
an arbitrarily initial position, phase A starts its excitation
as the rotor teeth begins aligning with the stator poles
while phase B is excited at nearly fully aligned position.
Also, phase C is not excited. It is noted that the peak flux
level is at 2.1T. Fig.4(b) shows the excitation pattern and
the corresponding flux levels after a 50 rotor travel. Only
phase A is excited at this moment. In Fig.4(c), the rotor
has traveled a total of 100. Phase A is approaching nearly
fully aligned, phase B is now un-excited, and phase C
begins its alignment and is now excited. The FEA results
are used to calculate the instantaneous torque value.

B. Simulation Results
Simulation results are performed by using a special Fig.5 Simulated outputs of the motor with at 120rpm –
switched reluctance software program, called SRSim®, Total torque (upper curve), phase currents (lower)
developed by the authors [4]. It links with the FEA
program and allows different switching schemes and
control programs to be performed, and can output torque,
speed, current and voltage curves, among others. Fig.5
shows the simulation results from SRSim ®, when the
motor is driving a load of 30Nm at 120rpm at rated
voltage. Simple hystersis current control method is used.
The upper curve shows the torque and the lower curve is
the current from the 3 phases. It can be seen that the
torque ripple is relative low for the new SRM compared,
even when only a simple control current control is used.
It has been demonstrated elsewhere [4] that significant
improvement of the torque can be achieved with more
advanced control methods.

Fig.6 Measured motor torque at 120rpm

IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
A laboratory prototype motor based on the novel SRM
concept has been designed and built, which is shown in
Fig.6. In order to generate experimental results to be
used to validate the simulation model and the FEA
results, the motor is setup to drive a controlled load
simulated by the braking system of a gokart. Fig.7 shows
the whole experimental setup, with the torque sensor and
data acquisition system. During the experimental tests,
the motor was driving against the braking load applied
from the gokart while steady state speed was maintained
manually. A relatively low speed of 120rpm was used in
the tests, while the load torque was set to about 30Nm.
Fig.8 shows the measured torque of the motor. It can be
seen that, allowing for some experimental and
instrumentation errors, the experimental results are in
close agreement with the simulation results. Since the
current setup cannot be performed under prolonged
testing condition due to the amount of heat generated,
further experimental results at higher speeds can only be
performed when a more high power dynamometer setup
is ready.
V. CONCLUSION
An in-wheel SRM with a yokeless rotor and yoke-less
stator is introduced. The apparent advantages of the motor
include less iron losses, higher torque density, among
others. The basic operations and finite element results of
the motor are presented. The FEA results are then used to
predict the performance of the new motor using a
specialist simulation software. The simulation results are
then confronted with the experimental results, which
confirm the model of the motor.
REFERENCES
[1] T. J. E. Miller, Switched Reluctance Motors and Their Control.
Oxford, U.K.: Oxford Science, 1993.
[2] P. C. Kjaer, J. J. Gribble, and T. J. E. Miller, “High-grade control
of switched reluctance machines,” IEEE Trans. Ind. Applicat., vol.
33, pp. 1585–1593, Nov./Dec. 1997.
[3] Torrey, D.A. Lang, J.H., ‘Modelling a nonlinear variable-
reluctance motor drive,” Electric Power Applications, IEE
Proceedings B, Sep 1990, Volume: 137, Issue: 5, On page(s):
314-326.
[4] Luk, P.C.K., Jinupun, P, ‘Instantaneous thrust control for a linear
switched reluctance motor,’ Power Electronics Specialists
Conference, 2004. PESC 04. 2004 IEEE 35th Annual Publication
Date: 20-25 June 2004, Volume: 3, On page(s): 2265- 2269 Vol.3

Prototype Yokeless SRM

Fig.7 Full experimental Setup