Improving High-Speed Switched Reluctance Motor by Amorphous Alloy and a New Winding Configuration for Electric Vehicles

Switched reluctance motors (SRMs) have simple and robust structure, which is attractive for electric vehicles' (EVs) application. However, the torque densities of SRMs are much lower than those of permanent-magnet synchronous motors (PMSMs). A solution to obtain a comparable level of the power density with PMSMs is to run the SRMs to higher speeds. In this case, the core losses and the copper AC losses will be significantly high. In this paper, amorphous alloy is proposed to reduce the core losses. To increase the slot copper filling factor and the heat dissipation ability of the stator winding, the flat wire is used and a racetrack-type winding is proposed. The new winding configuration can reduce the eddy current losses to some extent. Meanwhile, the manufacturing and installation of the winding are simplified. To evaluate the benefits by using the amorphous alloy and the new winding, a SRM demonstrator of 30,000 r/min and 25 kW is designed.