Evaluation of DC Excitation of External-Rotor-Segment-Type SRM for Power Generation

Abstract

We evaluate an external segment-type switched reluctance motor (ESSRM) generator via simulations and experiments on an actual ESSRM. In the simulation, the shape of ESSRM was optimized using a genetic algorithm with two shape sizes varied as parameters. As a result of calculating 480 different shapes, it is found that the model that optimized by the genetic algorithm has a 1.45% higher power generation efficiency of 95.08% and a 634 W higher generated power of 2,896 W than the model optimized using a single parameter. To prototype a small SRM for evaluating the validity of the simulation model, the ESSR simulation model is similarly miniaturized. We developed a small model of ESSRM and conducted power generation experiments. In the ESSRM, the maximum power generation efficiency was measured as 62.13% when the generated power was 81.20 W. As a result of comparing the simulation results with the experimental results by changing the number of segments, consistently the power generation efficiency was consistently highest when the number of segments was five in both experiments and simulations. The results confirm the validity of the simulation model.