Patent 8957560 was granted and assigned to Denso on February, 2015 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A rotor includes a rotor core and permanent magnets each of which is received in a corresponding slot of the rotor core with its magnetization direction being oblique to a radial direction of the rotor core. Each of the permanent magnets has a first corner portion positioned radially outermost and a second corner portion positioned radially innermost. For each of the permanent magnets, there are formed first and second gaps respectively between the first corner portion and the inner surface of the corresponding slot and between the second corner portion and the inner surface of the corresponding slot in a reference direction of the permanent magnet. The rotor core also has, for each of the permanent magnets, supporting portions each of which abuts and thereby supports, in the reference direction, a predetermined portion of the permanent magnet which is positioned away from both the first and second corner portions.