Design and Performance of the Solid Rotor Reluctance Machines

The solid rotor reluctance motors can be designed to have a relatively high saliency and so offer good performance in terms of mechanical constraints and losses. This paper presents the design and performance of a rotor configuration in which axial holes are drilled. The effect of the number and the holes' dimensions on the synchronous torque is first analyzed. An equivalent reluctivity is then defined and used to calculate, by the finite element method, the starting performance of this rotor and also of the classical one. These machines have the particularity of a great level of saturation because of the skin effect in the iron rotor, which necessitates special attention in the mesh modeling. The computed characteristics obtained under constant voltage are compared with test measurements.