Introducing reluctance motors in electric machines and drives courses: A new approach

The teaching of electrical machines and drives requires a new approach to make them more attractive to students, to address and overcome the limitations of time and resources that are usual in electrical engineering programs. The target of this new approach is that after following the course students should have a consistent knowledge and skills on electric machines and drives that gives them the ability to deal, with solvency, any problem related with them. In this paper, following these assumptions, reluctance motors are introduced considering that the different types of reluctances motors are derived from a common origin that is the singly-excited electromechanical converter. Then the fundamentals of switched reluctance motors, steeping variable-reluctance motors and synchronous reluctance motors are presented. The proposed approach requires only some basic knowledge that is usually taught in the courses of electric machines and drives and allows students to learn and understand the basis of the reluctance motors very quickly.