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Published in IET Electric Power Applications
Received on 6th May 2013
Revised on 14th September 2013
Accepted on 2nd October 2013
doi: 10.1049/iet-epa.2013.0154
ISSN 1751-8660
Abstract: Switched reluctance motors (SRM) are becoming increasingly popular because of the rising cost of permanent
magnets. It was reported that segmented rotor construction improves the torque output and efficiency. This study discusses an
SRM with segmented rotor construction designed for direct drive application. Such a motor has an outer rotor. It is found that
in such machines, the torque output increases when there are higher number of rotor segments than stator poles. A segmented
rotor SRM with 12 stator poles and 26 rotor segments is discussed here. It has unique pole tip shape, which improves torque
output. Design procedure of the motor is presented. Moreover, limitations of segmented rotor SRMs having a higher number
of rotor segments than stator poles are also identified, and possible solutions are suggested. Experimental results on the
prototype of a three-phase 12/26 motor are presented.
As seen in Fig. 1c, stator slot opening can be expressed in 2.3.1 Relation between pole arcs of wide and narrow
terms of stator pole arc and pitch as stator poles: In case of SSRM with single tooth winding,
as coils sides of the same coil are placed in adjacent slots, they
SPAw + SPAn must have phase shift of 0° with respect to each other.
slot opening = SPP − (4)
2 However, as seen in Section 2.1, the phase shift is 60 or
120° depending on the slot–pole combination. The phase
Hence shift is corrected by maintaining the following relation
between wide and narrow pole arcs
D RPA − SPP + (SPAw + SPAn /2)
fa = Bg L (5) 720p 720
2 2 SPAw − SPAn = − (8)
Nr Ns
Substituting this value of φa in (2), putting (φa/φu) = S and
(SPAw + SPAn/2) = SPAm, (i.e. mean stator pole arc) gives where p is the number of rotor segments contained in one
an expression for torque in terms of geometric parameters stator pole pitch. In case of 12/10 SSRM, p = 1, whereas
p = 2 for 12/26 SSRM. It is seen from Fig. 2a that higher
torque is obtained for SPAm = 26°. Hence, the value of
mNI 1 D N (RPA + SPAm − SPP)
T= 1− Bg L r (6) SPAm is selected to be 26°. Substituting values of Nr, Ns
2p S 2 2 and p in the above equation gives SPAw − SPAn = −4.615°
for 12/26 SSRM. Hence, SPAw and SPAn are selected to be
Putting rotor pole arc (RPA) = c rotor pole pitch (RPP) = 23.7 and 28.3° in the current design. Similarly, as seen in
Fig. 2 Effect of
a Stator pole arc on static torque profile
b Ratio of RPA to pole pitch on static torque profile
Fig. 3 Effect of stator pole tooth width on flux paths and torque
a Flux density distribution in the aligned position
b Machine geometry with wide stator pole tips
c Effect of stator pole tip width on torque profile
rotor segments cannot be designed with a high value of k. 3 Comparison with existing SRMs
Thus, the width of the iron parts would not be sufficient to
carry the higher flux that is forced through them because of The performance of this motor is now compared with that of a
reduction in the reluctance of the stator pole tip. Thus, there 6/10 SRM proposed in [1] and a 12/16 SSRM of [7]. The
is little effect on torque when the modified stator pole tip is comparative study is carried out with the help of FE-based
used in case of machines with lower number of rotor simulation tool. The two machines of [1, 7] are re-designed
segments than stator slots (e.g. 12/8 SSRM). with the same dimensions as the 12/26 SSRM. The results
Thus, it is concluded that this pole tip shape gives higher of the comparison are summarised in Table 2. It is seen
torque output for SSRMs with Nr > Ns. from this table that efficiency and torque to weight ratio of
the developed SSRM are significantly higher than that of
the existing machines. The iron loss in case of 12/16 SSRM
is lower than that of 6/10 SSRM in spite of higher number
Table 2 Comparison with existing SRM of rotor segments. This is because of lower iron weight and
Parameters 12/26 12/16 6/10
short flux paths of SSRM. Furthermore, in case of SSRM, it
SSRM SSRM SRM is found that flux reversals are eliminated from the stator by
arranging the coils as follows: A+, B−, C+, A−, B+, C−, A
stack length, mm 40 40 40 +, B−, C+, A−, B+ and C− as shown in Fig. 5a.
air gap, mm 0.4 0.4 0.4
torque, Nm 24.6 24.3 24.3
copper loss, W 78 116 172 4 Limitations of increasing the number of
iron loss, W 51 29 38 rotor segments
net loss, W 129 145 210
efficiency, % 90.4 88.5 86.5 4.1 Narrow range of field weakening
iron weight, kg 4.5 5.4 7.8
copper weight, kg 3.2 5.4 3.34
torque/active weight, Nm/kg 3.25 2.2 2.2 A limitation of increasing the number of rotor segments (for a
given number of stator slots) is reduction in the field
5 Experimental results
A prototype of 12/26 SSRM with the modified pole tip shape
is fabricated. The specifications of this machine are given in
Table 3. The stator and rotor laminations are shown in
Fig. 9a. The wound stator is shown in Fig. 9b, whereas the
assembled rotor is shown in Fig. 9c. As the rotor consists
of isolated segments, connection of the segments together
Fig. 10 Inductance profile of 12/26 SSRM presents an engineering challenge. Embedding the rotor
segments in aluminium was proposed in [16]. However, it
is found that this leads to high-conduction losses in
4.3 Lower torque at high currents
aluminium, thereby deteriorating the efficiency of the motor. The variation of efficiency with speed when the motor is
These losses are reduced by placing the isolated segments in a supplying a constant load torque of 12 Nm is shown in
stainless steel frame. The shape of the rotor segments is Fig. 12. The maximum measured efficiency is 91%. Below
modified in order to facilitate their secure placement in the base speed, the motor is operated in discontinuous
stainless steel frame. The measured inductance profile of the conduction mode, whereas the operating mode is changed
motor is shown in Fig. 10. to continuous conduction above base speed. Currents in
For the purpose of testing, the motor is coupled to a DC discontinuous and continuous conduction modes are shown
generator. The torque output is measured by using a stress in Figs. 13a and b, respectively. It is seen from this figure
sensor. The motor is fed through asymmetric bridge inverter that the minimum value of the current is not zero in
which is commonly used for SRM drives. continuous conduction mode. It is reported that continuous
Hysteresis current control is used, and the set current is conduction scheme leads to instability [14]. In this study,
equal to the rated current of the motor. The measured phase this issue is addressed by limiting the current. The set limit
current is shown in Fig. 11. Texas Instrument is equal to the rated current of the motor. The torque–speed
TMS320F2812 DSP processor with eZdSP system kit is characteristics of the motor are shown in Fig. 14a. It is seen
used to implement this control scheme. The motor is tested from this figure that the droop in these characteristics is
on open loop. Position information is required to switch high when the phase current is discontinuous.
ON/OFF the phases. This information is derived from an The power–speed characteristics of this machine are shown
incremental type position encoder from ALTHERIS Sensors in Fig. 14b. It is seen that this motor has no constant power
& Controls. region when the phase currents are discontinuous. However,
operation of the motor in this region weakening region can be motor is supplying rated power in the field weakening
achieved by using continuous conduction as seen in this region is shown in Fig. 14c. Slight reduction in efficiency
figure. The variation of efficiency with speed when the with speed is observed, because of use of continuous
conduction.
The lower overload capability of 12/26 SSRM can be
observed in Fig. 15 which shows the measured variation of
torque with p.u. current of 12/26 SSRM, along with that of
a 6/4 SSRM. It can be seen that the torque/ampere of 12/26
SSRM significantly exceeds that of 6/4 SSRM at lower
currents. However, the gap between these characteristics of
the machines reduces at higher currents.
6 Conclusions
It is found that for low-speed applications, efficiency and
torque output of external rotor segmented rotor SRM
increase with increasing number of rotor segments.
Therefore an outer rotor segmented rotor type SRM with 12
stator poles and 26 rotor segments is developed for direct
drive application. The design of this motor is discussed in
detail. The shape of the stator pole tip is modified to obtain
higher torque with low copper loss. Simulation study shows
that this motor has higher efficiency and torque to weight
Fig. 15 Variation of torque (p.u.) with current (p.u.) of 12/26 and ratio than other SRMs. The maximum measured efficiency
6/4 SSRMs of this motor is about 91%. Furthermore, it is seen that