Design of spoke type BLDC motors with high power density for traction applications

This paper presents a detailed comparative study of spoke type brushless dc (SPOKE-BLDC) motors due to the operating conditions and designs a new type SPOKE-BLDC with flux barriers for high torque applications, such as tractions. The current dynamic analysis method considering the local magnetic saturation of the rotor and the instantaneous current by pwm driving circuit is developed based on the coupled finite element analysis with rotor dynamic equations. From this analysis, several new structures using the flux barriers are designed and the characteristics are compared in order to reduce the large torque ripple and improve the average torque of SPOKE-BLDC. From these results, it is confirmed that the flux barriers, which are inserted on the optimized position of the rotor, have made remarkable improvement for the torque characteristics of the SPOKE-BLDC.