Design of outer-rotor-type multipolar switched reluctance motor for electric vehicle

In an electric vehicle (EV) with in-wheel motors, reducing the weight of the motor is a very important problem in order to improve the driving performance. In this paper, we examine the lightweight design of an outer-rotor-type multipolar switched reluctance (SR) motor applied to a prototype EV. We design three SR motors which have different yoke widths and calculate the motor characteristics at a steady rotational speed based on a finite element method. We discuss the optimum relationship between a pole and yoke widths.