General power equation of switched reluctance machines and power density comparison

Switched reluctance machines (SRMs) are becoming increasingly attractive due to their inherent advantages, such as robust and rare-earth-permanent magnet-free topology, as well as excellent fault-tolerance and temperature management. However, the accurate and efficient analyses of SRMs are always challenging since they operate with variable reluctance and pulsating excitation, suffering severe nonlinear characteristics. This paper first introduces a general power equation of SRMs, which can be a powerful tool in the investigation of SRMs. Then, the proposed power equation is validated by finite element (FE) results and experimental results with different excitations. Afterwards, the calculated results with various conditions including different stator inner diameters and different stator outer diameters are compared with the FE-predicted results. Finally, the comparison between SRMs and several conventional machines is carried out to evaluate the power density of SRMs.