Permanent magnet synchronous reluctance machine — Design guidelines to improve the acoustic behavior

The permanent magnet synchronous reluctance machine (PMSynRM) is a type of permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM) with the objective to provide high reluctance torque. This is realized by a particularly designed constellation of flux barriers in the rotor of the machine. Beside high efficiency and supplied power density, an acoustic evaluation of this machine is performed for various applications, for example in hybrid and electric vehicles (HEV, EV). A study for the acoustic design of a PMSynRM is presented in this paper. An approach to improve the magnetic circuit by varying the shape of the flux barriers is introduced. Using numerical simulations every operating point in the d-q-diagram is considered. The local force density in the air gap of the machine is calculated and analyzed with a 2-D Fourier Transformation. The results are used as analysis criterion.