This paper presents a detailed magnetic equivalent circuit (MEC) to improve the analysis accuracy and reduce computation time in modeling of axial flux permanent magnet machines. In the proposed MEC model, the magnetic saturation, armature reaction, leakage flux, and rotor rotation are considered to calculate the machine's static characteristics. The investigated machine structure and feature are first introduced. Then, the air-gap flux density distribution, back electromotive force waveform, and the average torque are calculated with the proposed method. Finally, the accuracy of the proposed method is verified by the 3-D finite-element method, and good agreements are achieved.

This paper investigates the electromagnetic and thermal performances of the open-circuit air cooled high-speed permanent magnet motor (HSPMM) with Gramme ring windings. Take a 36 kr/min, 75 kW HSPMM as an example, the electromagnetic losses, in particular the rotor eddy current loss and the stator iron loss of the motor are calculated. The influences of switching frequency and air gap length on these losses are studied. Then, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is composed to calculate its coolant flow parameters and the temperature distribution. Based on the CFD results, a lumped-parameter thermal network (LPTN) is created and verified. Then, a 24 kr/min, 140 kW prototype with the same structure and cooling configuration is designed using the LPTN. Experiments show that the calculated results are with reasonable accuracy. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is applied to the 140 kW prototype based on the LPTN to disclose the influences of different parameters on the rotor permanent magnet temperature rise.

In this paper, a nonlinear magnetic network model (NMNM) is proposed to predict the electromagnetic performance of a hybrid-excitation flux-switching (HEFS) machine, in which the modeling of the magnetic motive forces (MMF) due to field windings is specifically investigated. The proposed NMNM enables the predictions of air-gap flux-density distributions, flux linkage, back-electromotive force (back-EMF), and inductances of both armature and field windings under different excitation conditions, including pure magnets, pure field currents, and hybrid excitations. The predicted results from the NMNM model are validated by 2-D finite element analysis.

Flux-switching permanent magnet (FSPM) machine is a relatively novel brushless machine, which exhibits inherently sinusoidal PM flux-linkage, back-EMF waveforms and high torque capability. However, the air-gap field density is difficult to be regulated since it is produced by the stator magnets alone. Hence, hybrid-excited flux-switching (HEFS) machine is proposed by introducing a set of field windings into an original FSPM machine. However, in HEFS machines the flux linkages of armature windings vary in inverse proportion to the air-gap flux density when significantly saturated, which is different from the conventional machines. So in this paper, the oversaturated phenomenon in HEFS machines is explained and the effect of saturation, especially due to magnet material, on the relationship between air-gap flux density and armature flux linkage is investigated based on 2-D finite element analysis. Also, an effective stator-tooth-width coefficient (k_stw) is defined to evaluate the oversaturated effect quantitatively.