Abstract—Reluctance motors are generally employed in synthetic fibre industry, glass making machinery and textile industry where the speed is almost constant. The power factor and efficiency of reluctance motor ranges between 0.35 to 0.5 and 55 % to 75% respectively. The product of power factor and efficiency is between 0.25 and 0.32. An attempt is made in this paper to improve the efficiency and power factor of reluctance motor. A 3 kW, 415V, 1500 rpm, Double Winding Synchronous Reluctance Motor (DWSyRM) has been designed, fabricated and tested. The stator consists of two sets of three phase winding in the same core. Saliency is made in the squirrel cage rotor by removing the set of rotor teeth alternatively. When a three phase supply is given to the stator winding, a revolving magnetic field of constant magnitude is developed in the air gap. Rotor poles are pulled into synchronism by reluctance torque. Out of two windings in the stator, one winding is used to meet the mechanical load while a three phase emf induced in the second winding works as an Induction alternator (IA), to which a single phase or small three phase load can be connected. Since the machine runs at synchronous speed the terminal voltage at the secondary winding is almost maintained at a constant. Both the windings can be loaded simultaneously. Machine has to be operated at its maximum capacity for the given no load losses, to achieve better efficiency. Load tests with various combinations of electrical and mechanical loads have been conducted. Experiment results prove the improvement in the efficiency and power factor to a great extent compared to Reluctance motor.

Index Terms—Double Winding Synchronous Reluctance Motor (DWSyRM), Induction alternator,Efficiency, Power factor improvement

Cite: V.Chandrasekaran and T.Manigandan, "Design and Effective Operation of Double Winding Synchronous Reluctance Motor," International Journal of Computer and Electrical Engineering vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 432-438, 2011.