Design and Analysis of a Material Efficient Sinusoidal Consequent-Pole High-Speed Axial-Flux Machine

Abstract

This paper presents a high-speed axial-flux machine which utilizes the idea of sinusoidal shaped pole combined with a consequent iron-pole. The target of the proposed machine is the cost reduction of the relatively expensive Samarium-Cobalt (SmCo) permanent magnet (PM) material and the torque per PM volume improvement by using sinusoidal consequent-pole rotor. The effectiveness of the proposed machine is validated by comparing it with conventional consequent-pole and with conventional PM machines using 3-D finite element method (FEM) simulations. The comparison and analysis is done in terms of back electro-motive force (back-EMF) harmonic contents, torque per PM volume and torque ripple characteristics. The simulation results show that the proposed machine is suitable and cost-effective for high-speed and high torque per PM volume applications. Furthermore, due to the consequent pole, the magnetic flux saturation and the overload current torque-capability are also presented and discussed in the paper.