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This paper investigates the performance of synchronous reluctance motors when the stator is equipped with a combined star–delta winding layout. The conventional star winding is used as a benchmark in this study to compare different possible single-layer winding layouts. Among these different winding layouts, those which maximize the fundamental magneto-motive force component are selected. A simple mathematical formula is then derived to calculate the equivalent winding factor for different shares between star and delta subwindings. It has been proved that for the same copper volume and line current magnitude, the star–delta connection can offer an enhancement in the torque density of approximately 5.2% over the conventional star case under rated conditions. However, this gain is affected by the employed number of poles and stator slots. On the other hand, the effect of the winding layout on either power factor or core loss can be merely neglected over a wide range of speeds and currents. Nevertheless, the machine efficiency under a combined star–delta connection is relatively improved under light loading as a result to the machine torque/current ratio enhancement. The theoretical findings are experimentally validated using two identical 5.5 kW prototype machines, having star and combined star–delta winding connections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes and compares the synchronous reluctance motor (SynRM) performance for a conventional star winding and for a combined star-delta connected winding under healthy and faulty conditions. The finite element method is used to simulate the SynRM characteristics in case of normal star and in case of combined star-delta connected windings. For the healthy case, it was found that for the same current, the SynRM output power increased by about 5% for the star-delta connected windings compared with the conventional star connection. Moreover, the efficiency increased slightly by 0.20%. Probably the strongest advantage of the combined star-delta winding is observed when a phase fault occurs. When one phase is missing, for the same current, the star-delta connected motor keeps 80% of the rated torque in the healthy case, while the star connected motor only keeps 40%. Furthermore, the torque ripple of the star wound machine is extremely high in case of a missing phase, compared to the star-delta wound machine. Simulation results were validated by experimental results to show the effectiveness of the star-delta connected windings on the SynRM. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]