Vibrations of magnetic origin of switched reluctance motors

Vibrations and acoustic noise are some of the fundamental problems in the design and exploitation of switched reluctance motors (SRMs). Adequate experimental and analysis methods may help to resolve these problems. This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the magnetic force distribution in SRM and a procedure for calculating the magnetic forces and the resulting vibrations based on the 2D finite element method. Magnetic field and force computations and a structural analysis of the stator have been carried out in order to compute the frequency spectrum of the generalized forces and displacements of the most relevant vibration modes. It is shown that for these vibration modes, the frequency spectrum can be predicted analytically. The theoretical and the numerical analyses have been applied to a 6/4 SRM and an experimental validation is presented.