**5. Conclusions**

This paper has investigated the influence of considering the current angle on the final optimal geometry when designing the rotor of a synchronous reluctance motor. Five cases for different ranges of current angles have been studied and compared using finite element simulation. It is proved that considering the current angle on the SynRM rotor design is effective to obtain improved performance of the SynRM. It is observed that the output power is increased by about 3.32% when the current angle is considered as a variable during the rotor design optimization process compared to the fixed current angle case. In addition, the selection of the appropriate current angle value for fixed current angle cases has a significant influence on the torque ripple of the optimized rotor geometry. Further, it is also noticed that the range of the current angle plays a role in the maximum output torque and torque ripple value. Moreover, it is found that for a fixed current angle case (angle = 45◦), the torque ripple of the optimal geometry is greatly decreased by 34.20% compared to a case of current angle equal to 56.50◦, which is the reference case in literature [26]. In the end, a test bench for a 5.5 kW three-phase SynRM has been carried out to validate the simulated results.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, K.B.T., M.N.I., H.R. and P.S., validation, K.B.T., M.N.I., H.R., writing—original draft preparation, K.B.T., M.N.I., H.R., writing—review and editing, M.N.I., H.R., and P.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
