Optimal rotor design of novel outer rotor reluctance synchronous machine

This paper presents the optimal design and performance analysis of a novel synchronous reluctance motor with outer rotor for determination of the effect of the rotor pole shape on the machine’s performances. The investigation has been made in order to find the possible ways to improve the power factor with refining the rotor geometry without using permanent magnets. Starting from the design of the machine with classical rotor pole that was implemented in FLUX 2D, a finite element analysis software coupled with an optimal design procedure implemented in MATLAB was performed. The purpose of this complex co-simulation was to obtain several outer rotor structures that increase the performances of the machine: saliency ratio, power factor and torque density. For the proposed structures, especially for the modular topology, the obtained results of saliency and power factor have never been presented in the past literature. Hence, this represents a useful starting point for the following analysis of outer rotor synchronous reluctance machines with improved power factor.