Design and Experimental Evaluation of a 12 kW Large Synchronous Reluctance Motor and Control System for Elevator Traction

Recently, a new type of motor, synchronous reluctance motor (SRM), has attracted wide attention from academia and industry because of its potential applications in fans, pumps, and elevator traction systems. Compared with traditional motors, these motors have lower eddy-current loss, less torque ripple, reduced noise, smaller moment of inertia, and faster dynamic response, and they provide a greater operating effciency and safety and are simpler and easier to maintain. However, the ontology design and operation control of SRMs continue to be signifcant hurdles that must be overcome prior to practical implementation. In order to facilitate the practical application of SRMs in industry, at the invitation of an elevator company, we designed a large SRM for elevator traction. Herein, we describe the design of the proposed system and present a theoretical analysis of the system. Furthermore, we fabricate a real prototype and the corresponding control system and perform an experimental test under the rated operating conditions and 1.5x overload conditions in order to verify the SRM's performance. The results of the experimental testing were satisfactory and consistent with the theoretical calculations. At present, we have entered the stage of small-batch trial production and we expect to ultimately implement this novel design. Further, the approach to ontology design and operation control in this study can be used to inform the future development of novel SRMs.