Design of a Switched Reluctance Motor for an Elevator Application

This paper presents the design procedure and the electromagnetic design of a switched reluctance motor for a vertical transport application. A market study is conducted to understand the solutions offered for elevator systems. The system specifications of a leading manufacturer are used to model an elevator system. The model is used to calculate the motor requirements and dimensions. For the design process, a static finite-elemental analysis is carried out in JMAG Designer to meet the torque-speed requirements. Then the electromagnetic characteristics of the motor are used in a dynamic mathematical model in MATLAB/Simulink to calculate the motor performance within the given operational range. A Genetic Algorithm (GA) based optimizer is used to optimize the control variables of the motor drive. Finally, the performance of the SRM design is compared with the application requirements.