Abstract
M.Ing.
The robust and rigid construction of the reluctance machine makes it extremely useful for high speed applications e.g. in kinetic energy storage systems. Although its rigid construction offers, a degree of high reliability, its disadvantage is its low specific output power.
In this dissertation a complete new concept is considered in which the output power of a reluctance machine is increased by 55% (rectangular current fed). The optimisation of the reluctance machine output power is achieved by forming the pole profile of the rotor.
The conventional rectangular rotor pole profile is changed to a triangular rotor pole profile. A twelve phase rectangular current fed reluctance machine is used to test the validity of the theory. This is done by comparing theoretical predicted results and practical results. A strong resemblance between the results indicated that this theory is a good description of the reluctance machine.
In the last chapter, behaviour predictions of the reluctance machine with a conventional rotor are compared with a formed pole rotor.
The output power of these results indicate that the output power
of a current fed reluctance machine, will increase by 55% when using
an optimally formed pole profile rotor.