kko il

o il ver. 1.0
ver. 1.0

Manual for version 1.0.

Luigi Alberti
 Manual of Koil Version 1.0
Luigi Alberti luigi.alberti@unipd.it
March 8, 2010

Contents
1 Introduction 3

2 The star of slots 4

3 Installation 5
3.1 windows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.2 Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

A License 6

B Version and Credits 6

C Bugs and comments 7

1 Introduction
This program allows the design of a three–phase winding on the basis of the star
of slots theory. As an example, Fig. 1 shows a screenshot of the program. On
the left there are the input data which are the number of slots and the number
of pole pairs. Pressing the button Compute the winding periodicity t and an the
initial coil throw yq (the closest to the theoretical one) are computed. Then the
user can select a desired coil throw, and he computation are performed again.

Figure 1: A screenshot of Koil. A 12–slot 10–pole winding example is shown.

Below the winding data, there are three tab (one for each phase) with the
list of all the coils that compose the winding. For each coil the start slot and
the end slot are reported. Moreover, there is an indication about the sector sign
in the star of slot [1].
Below the coils tab there is a text box for message from Koil, for example
about the winding data and feasibility.
On the right there are two tabs. In the first a draw of one phase winding is
sketched. It is possible to adjust some drawing parameters changing the values
in the Draw settings frame. In order to apply the changes, it is necessary to
push the Redraw button.
In the second tab, the winding factor of the harmonics up to order 100 is
computed and reported in a table view. This values are updated every time the

3
winding data are changed (for example when changing the coil throw yq).
Finally the slot matrices of the three phases can be exported in a file ready
for use in FEMM LUA script selecting Save slot matrix. It is also possible to
save on a text file a complete winding report.
The first time it is run, Koil shows a 12–slot 10–pole winding. Then, Koil
remember your last winding and repropose it at the next execution. Moreover
also the window preference are stored.

2 The star of slots

This section aims to briefly recall the theory of the star of slots. Only the main
characteristics and proprieties are reported; for more information please refer
to [1].
Electrical machines with fractional–slot winding are suitable to satisfy the
requirements of many applications. For instance they may be applied when very
low speed is required, so that the machine is designed with a high number of
poles.
Firstly, the star of slots was presented to the aim of designing fractional–slot
windings of large synchronous generators with a high number of poles [2, 3]. It is
useful to determine the correct coils connection to maximize the main harmonic
of the EMF induced in the windings.
In addition, since the star of slots contains information of the winding dis-
tribution, it can be adopted not only for the analysis of the main harmonic of
EMF, but also for the analysis
• of the harmonic contents of the EMF waveform, and
• of the harmonic contents of the air–gap MMF distribution.
The key rules in the design of a fractional–slot winding are so as to obtain:
1. the maximum amplitude of the main harmonic of EMF waveform,
2. an equal EMF waveform in each phase, with
3. an angular displacement of 2π/m electrical radians among the phases.
The star of slots is formed by Q phasors. They are numbered according to
the number of the corresponding slot.
The machine periodicity is given by the greatest common divisor (G.C.D.)
between Q and p, that is
t = G.C.D. {Q, p} (1)
The star of slots is the phasor representation of the main EMF harmonic induced
in the coil side of each slot, characterized by
• Q/t spokes,
• each spoke containing t phasors.

4
 The angle between the phasors of two adjacent slots is the electrical angle
αse = pαs , where αs is the slot angle in mechanical radians, i.e. αs = 2π/Q.
The angle between two spokes results in (see Fig. 2):

2π αe
αph = = st (2)
(Q/t) p

Figure 2: The angle relation in the star of slot.

3 Installation
Koil is developed in C++ using Qt4TM and so it is designed to be a cross–
platform application. All the source code is distributed under the terms of the
GPL license, see Section A. To compile it you need to install the QT library
and to have a C++ compiler (like MinGW under windows). Please refer to
the Qt4TM documentation to obtain information about the compiling on the
different platform. 1
Besides the source code, also a compiled version is provided for windows and
Linux, as described in the following. In this case all the necessary library are
distributed with Koil so you don’t need to install Qt4TM and to compile the
source code.

3.1 windows
In this case the following file are provided:

• koil.exe
the executable program
1

5
 • Icon.png
the icon file for the executable program
• mingwm10.dll
a dynamic–link library
• QtGui4.dll
a dynamic–link library
• QtCore4.dll
a dynamic–link library
In order to run Koil just let all the file in the same directory so they can
see each other.

3.2 Linux
The best solution is to compile from sourcecode. In this case you need the
Qt4TM library besides the C++ compiler.
Also a compiled version is distributed with some required library, but this
does not work in all case. Help and collaboration in writing a source package
(rpm or deb) is welcome.

A License
This software is developed by Luigi Alberti and Nicola Bianchi.
Copyright (C) 2009 Luigi Alberti and Nicola Bianchi.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it

and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation;
either version 2 of the License, or (at your option)
any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,

but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public

License along with this program; if not, write to the Free
Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston,
MA 02111-1307 USA

B Version and Credits

• Version 1.0 has been released on February 2009.

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C Bugs and comments
If you find a bug or if you have any suggestions, please write an e–mail to the
authors.

References
[1] N. Bianchi, M. Dai Pré, L. Alberti, and E. Fornasiero, Theory and Design of
Fractional-Slot PM Machines, Sponsored by the IEEE-IAS Electrical Ma-
chines Commitee, Ed. Padova: CLEUP (ISBN 978-88-6129-122-5), 2007.
[2] R. Richter, Lehrbuch der Wicklungen Elektrischer Machinen, W. Bucherei,
Ed. Karlsruhe: G. Braun, 1952.

[3] M. Liwschitz-Garik and C. C. Whipple, Alternating–Current Machines. Van

Nostrand Company, 1961, iD: Macchine elettriche; ID: Corrente alternata.