Original Paper(Vol.57 No.8 pp.826-831)

Failure Phenomenon and Fatigue Design Method of Synchronous Reluctance Motor Rotor by Rotating Failure Test

Yoichi TAMIYA and Masaya INOUE

Abstract:Synchronous reluctance motors (SynRM) have an effect for saving energy and reducing CO2 emissions by reason that the efficiency of them is higher than of induction motors. But now, SynRM are not much put a thing to practical use because that the high-precise fatigue design method of the rotor at centrifugal force is required for the preliminaly functional design. Accordingly, it is indispensable to establish the high-precise fatigue design method in order that SynRM are applied in market, safely and economically. In this paper, rotating fatigue failure tests were carried out using the SynRM rotor samples, and stress distribution of the rotor is calculated by finite element method (FEM). Then, experimental results were analyzed using the FEM results and the fatigue data of simple shaped specimens. The conclusions are obtained as follows:
(1) Failure phenomenon and strength limit of SynRM rotor at centrifugal force can be turned out clearly.
(2) Validity of FEM model of the rotor is confirmed by a comparison of experimental results and FEM results.
(3) And, using the FEM simulation, high-precise fatigue design method of SynRM rotor can be established.
Moreover, this method can be adopted for fatigue design of interior permanent magnet synchronous motors (IPMSM) and permanent magnet assisted SynRM, too.

Key Words:Synchronous reluctance motor, Rotor, Centrifugal force, Rotating failure test, Fatigue strength, Structural analysis, Finite element method