A generalized magnetic circuit modeling approach for design of surface permanent-magnet machines

This paper proposes a generalized equivalent magnetic circuit model for the design of permanent-magnet (PM) electric machines. Conventional approaches have been applied to PM machine design but may be insufficiently accurate or generalized without taking pole-slot counts into consideration. This would result in reduction of dimensioning accuracy at the initial design stage. Also, magnetic saturation is often ignored or compensated by correction factors in simplified models since it is difficult to determine the flux in individual stator teeth. In this paper, the flux produced by stator winding currents and PMs can be calculated accurately and rapidly using the developed model, taking saturation into account. A new modeling technique for PM poles is proposed so that the magnetic circuit is applicable to any pole-slot combinations. This aids machine dimensioning without the need for computationally expensive finite-element analysis (FEA). A 540-kW PM machine is first designed using the proposed method and then verified with FEA. Another 350-W machine is subsequently designed, manufactured, and validated by both FEA and experiments. The comparisons demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed model.