Influence of rotor design and geometric parameter variation on global performance of Brushless Doubly-Fed Reluctance Machines

The Brushless Doubly-Fed Reluctance Machine (BD-FRM) is a potential candidate to compete with induction and permanent magnet machines in variable speed application such as wind power. It is in research phase and much effort, mostly on its electromagnetic design, is still needed so that this machine can be used in large scale. This paper focuses on rotor design by studying the impact of geometric parameter variations on its global performance by using Finite Element Analysis (FEA). Issues with the flux barrier ending´s geometry, number of rotor slots, existence of an additional interpolar flux barrier, rotor slot arc angle and duct ratio are investigated. The results show potentially good practices that should be considered on BDFRM rotor design. They may also be used as initial step for a more refined optimization process using specialized tools.