External-Rotor Switched Reluctance Motor for Direct-Drive Home Appliances

This paper presents the design of an external-rotor switched reluctance motor (SRM)for a direct-drive washing machine application and a comparison with a commercial model. First, a complete review of the state-of-the-art for “washing appliances” has been discussed and design requirements have been analyzed. Secondly, an external-rotor SRM with high number of poles has been chosen to obtain high torque density and power density. Then both, the electromagnetic and thermal performance of the external SRM have been evaluated by finite element analysis (FEA)in wash mode and spin cycle mode operations to confirm that the design fully satisfies the specifications at low and high-power range with high reliability. The mechanical prototype of the SRM has also been provided, which uses the same housing as the commercial benchmark model. Finally, the SRM design for the washing machine application has been validated based on experimental results.