Design and Analysis of Line Start Synchronous

Reluctance Motor with Dual Saliency

Bikrant Poudel, Ebrahim Amiri, Parviz Rastgoufard
University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, USA
eamiri@uno.edu

Abstract— This paper presents a design for a line start operate as a SynRM in both low and high speed regions. The
Synchronous Reluctance Motor (SynRM) capable of operating in flux barriers are specially arranged so that the rotor contains a 4-
two different synchronous speeds. The proposed design is based pole salient configuration overlaid on an 8-pole salient
on variable pole numbers for the stator and the rotor. To configuration, with the stator windings being reconfigured by
accommodate the stator with variable pole numbers, the stator two separate windings to change the operating pole count. It is
winding consists of two sets of independent windings to switch the worth noting that the proposed methodology is general and can
operating pole number for low and high speed regions. Likewise, be extended to any two different arbitrary pole numbers.
the rotor is especially designed to create two different reluctance
pole numbers to match with the operating stator pole numbers.
The proposed design enables the motor to operate as a SynRM at II. PRINCIPLE OF THE SCHEME AND MOTOR DESIGN
two different operating speeds without requiring a drive unit. To The stator winding consists of two independent windings
verify the performance of the proposed design, the motor is with two different pole numbers (4/8) to switch the winding and
analyzed in steady state and transient domain using 3-D Finite to change the operating pole count for high and low speed
Element Analysis (FEA). conditions. The rotor is designed to create two different
reluctance pole numbers to match with the stator operating pole
Keywords— Dual Saliency, Line Start Motor, Pole Changing,
Reluctance Torque count. This arrangement enables the motor to operate as a
SynRM at 750/1500 rpm. The produced reluctance torque is
given by Eq (1):
I. INTRODUCTION
Synchronous Reluctance Motor (SynRM) are gradually
= . 2 (1)
gaining interest in many industrial applications such as electric ɷ .
vehicles (EVs) [1, 2] for their simple rugged structure, high
power density, high efficiency and low cost. Such motors are where, , ɷ , , , , are respectively number
normally started and accelerated to the desired synchronous of poles, synchronous angular velocity, direct and quadrature
speed using a power electronics drive unit. Alternatively, reactance at the synchronous frequency, synchronous torque,
SynRMs can be started as a line start synchronous motor with input voltage and the torque angle.
the help of squirrel cage bars. The later approach would Fig. 1 illustrates the schematic of the proposed motor with
eliminate the operational cost and losses associated with the 4/8 pole structure to operate at 750/1500 rpm with the design
drive unit but would restrict the operation of the motor to a single data enclosed in Table I. As seen, flux barriers are especially
operating speed. arranged to create two different salient structures in the rotor. In
There are very few studies available in the literature on the Fig. 1 cage bars are shown with sky blue color around the
design of two-speed line start synchronous motors. In [3] a two- circumference of the rotor.
speed line start motor is presented to increase the efficiency of
compressor motors. However, this motor operates as an
induction motor at a high speed region (2-pole mode) and it is
only at low speed (4-pole mode) that the motor can operate as a
synchronous motor. The pole changing method based on
variable pole numbers for the stator and the rotor is presented in
[4-6] but with a considerable amount of Permanent Magnet
(PMs) in the rotor. In [4], a rotor design with dual PM polarity
enables the motor to operate as a PM synchronous motor at both
low and high speeds. In [5, 6], the two-speed operation is
realized by the combination of electromagnetic torque and
reluctance torque enabling the motor to operate as a synchronous
PM motor at high speed and a synchronous reluctance motor at
low speed.
To further reduce the operational cost, we propose and
present in this paper a design of two-speed line start synchronous
motor without using PMs in the rotor. In the proposed design,
the two-speed operation is achieved solely based on the
reluctance nature of the motor which enables the motor to Fig. 1. Schematic of the motor.

978-1-5386-3048-8/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE 385

 TABLE I
DESIGN DATA OF THE TWO-SPEED MOTOR
Stator Outer diameter 284 mm
Inner diameter 175 mm
Stack length 68 mm
Number of slots 48
Conductor per slot for high speed winding 34
Conductor per slot for low speed winding 52
Rotor Outer diameter 174.2 mm
Inner diameter 34 mm
Inertia 0.04 kgm2
Load Inertia 0.02 kgm2

With this design, the rotor possesses two reluctance pole

numbers (in this case 8 & 4) simultaneously. At low operating
speed (when the 8-pole stator winding is switched on) the (a)
reluctance nature of the four reluctance poles is almost
neutralized from the stator windings perspective and, thus, do
not interfere with the motor performance (Fig.2 a). Contrary, at
high rotor speed - when the 4-pole stator winding is switched
on- viewing from the stator windings the reluctance nature of the
eight reluctance poles is almost neutralized and the motor
operates mostly based on a rotor with four reluctance poles
(Fig.2 b). Therefore, the rotor can adjust itself to match its pole
number with the operating stator pole count. Nonetheless, there
is always negligible interference when switching from one pole
number to another.

(b)
Fig. 3. Magnetic lines of flux (a) 4-pole run (b) 8-pole run.

(a) (b)
Fig. 2. Schematic view of SynRM with (a) 8-pole winding and (b) 4-pole
winding.

Magnetic flux lines at no load are shown in Fig. 3.a and Fig. (a)
3.b for 4-pole and 8-pole runs. We deduce from these FEA
results that the motor is not saturated.

III. SIMULATION AND RESULTS

A. Steady State Analysis

The motor is excited by nominal sinusoidal current at 12 and
5 Amperes in 4-pole and 8-pole operation respectively. The
reluctance torque produced by the motor in each case is depicted
in Fig. 4. These torque results are obtained when the motor is
running at no load, and a speed slightly lower than synchronous (b)
speed to relate to various torque angles. From the steady state Fig. 4. Reluctance torque a) 4-pole run with the rotor speed slightly less than
analysis, it is inferred that the maximum reluctance torque synchronous speed (≤ 1500 rpm), b) 8-pole run with the rotor speed slightly
provided by the motor is almost 15 N.m. less than synchronous speed (≤ 750 rpm).

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B. Transient Analysis
To analyze the transient behavior of the motor, the motor is
started under a fan type load as shown in Fig. 5. The load torque
is proportional to the square of the rotor speed of Eq. 2 with
maximum amount of 15 N.m. at the speed of 1500 rpm. The
applied effective line to line voltage for both four-pole and eight-
pole stator windings is 380 V.
= (2)

(c)
Fig. 6. Starting transient response of the motor in 4-pole run a) speed, b)
produced torque, c) input current.

Fig. 5. Load torque characteristic.

The speed-time response of the motor starting for the 4-pole

operating mode is depicted in Fig. 6.a. It is observed that the
designed motor can successfully start and after the transient time
has passed, it reaches the synchronous speed (≈ 1500 rpm). The
characteristic of torque and the stator phase current versus time
for the same operating mode (4-pole) are shown in Fig. 6.b and (a)
Fig. 6.c. As seen, the torque and current settle at their steady
state values after some oscillations. Repeating the same
procedure for the 8-pole operating mode, we arrive at the speed,
torque, and current results of Fig. 7.a, Fig. 7.b, and Fig. 7.c.
respectively.

(b)

(a)

(c)
Fig. 7. Starting transient response of the motor in 8-pole run a) speed, b)
produced torque, c) input current.
(b)

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 As for the transient response of the motor when it is switched
from one synchronous speed to another, the switching time may
[6]
affect the dynamic behavior of the motor and, thus, should be
done at a proper time instant. Motor transient response when its
switched from 8-pole mode to 4-pole mode is shown in Fig. 8.
Conversion, IEEE Trans. Energy Conversion, October 2015, Volume 31,
Issue 1, Pages 366-372.
B. Poudel, E. Amiri, A. Damaki Aliabad and F. Ghoroghchian, "Line start
synchronous motor for multi-speed applications," 2017 IEEE
International Electric Machines and Drives Conference (IEMDC), Miami,
FL, 2017.

Fig. 8. Motor transient response when its switched from 8-pole mode to 4-pole
mode.

IV. CONCLUSIONS
A two-speed SynRM design based on the rotor structure with
dual saliency is proposed. The rotor contains a 4-pole
configuration overlaid on an 8-pole configuration, with the
stator windings being reconfigured to change the operating pole
count. The proposed design creates two reluctance pole numbers
and enables the motor to operate as a SynRM at two operating
speeds without requiring a drive unit which simply eliminates
associated cost and losses. This is desirable for applications that
mostly run at two discrete speeds like desert coolers.
The proposed design can still be applied for applications that
require variable (more than two) speeds, but with the help of a
drive unit. In this case, the switching between two distant
operating speeds is done by the proposed pole changing concept
and any minor speed change around the two distinct speeds is
done by the drive unit. Therefore, the proposed arrangement-
motor plus drive unit- could deliver speed change in a wider
range. To verify the performance of the proposed design, the
motor operation is analyzed in both steady state and transient
domain using 3-D FEA.

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IEEE International Electric Machines and Drives Conference (IEMDC),
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