FEA-Augmented Design Equations for Synchronous Reluctance Machines

The synchronous reluctance machine is an attractive substitute of induction motors and synchronous PM motors thanks to its higher efficiency and lower cost of materials, respectively. One of the main challenges relenting the adoption of these machines is the lack of a widely recognized procedure for their design. In the past, design equations were proposed for SyR machines by different authors. Those models represent a good starting point and a useful guideline for the designer, but they are far from being accurate enough in many aspects. To increase precision, different procedures based on finite element analysis were proposed over the years, but those methods have the dual downside of losing the physical insight on the effect of the various design parameters. In this work, a comprehensive design procedure based on design equations is reviewed and improved using few static FEA simulations to fix the errors of the analytical model, in order to increase the precision without reducing the generality of the model.