A canned electrical machine is featured by having a can shield in air gap as partition. Considerable ohmic loss generated from the can (can loss) is the most highlighted feature. In this paper, an analytical electromagnetic model is proposed to analyze can loss. The model is divided into calculation of magnetic vector potential and modeling of magnetic saturation. In particular, the loss influenced by salient poles is discussed. The studied canned machine is a 3‐phase 12/8 switched reluctance machine as a pump drive. It is stressed that we do not judge and discuss performance of the machine developed but propose a modeling approach to improve the loss calculation approach. The developed method has been validated with simulation and experiments. The model gives accurate calculation of losses for electrical machines of high magnetic saturation effect.