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Electromagnetic design of a new axial flux generator

Article · April 2015

DOI: 10.1109/ECAI.2014.7090195

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 ECAI 2014 - International Conference – 6th Edition
Electronics, Computers and Artificial Intelligence
23 October -25 October, 2014, Bucharest, ROMÂNIA
Electromagnetic Design of a New Axial Flux
Generator
Erol KURT
Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Faculty of Technology, Gazi University
Ankara, Turkey
ekurt@gazi.edu.tr
Abstract – This study presents the electromagnetic
design of a new permanent magnet generator. The
machine consists of two rotors at both sides and a stator
between them. The rotors have 32 rare earth disc
magnets in total and the stator has 24 coils. It is a three-
phase machine which produces directly sinusoidal
output. According to the finite element analysis (FEA), it
can produce 340 W at 1000 rpm for the air gap of 5 mm.
While some distortions are seen in the waveform at
lower rotor speeds such as 100- 200 rpm, the rated
values are obtained at 1000 rpm. The simulations prove
that the magnetic flux density of 0.6 T can be available
in the air gap due to the usage of a core. The machine is
easy to maintain and can be converted to a one-phase
machine easily after the changes of rotor structures.
Keywords-generator; permanent magnet; finite
element; power
I. INTRODUCTION
Improvements on the rare earth efficient
permanent magnet (PM) production has accelerated
the transition to the the PM generators in the
renewable energy applications. This transition has
been very popular especially in 1980’s after the
invention of Neodium (NdFeB) magnets [1,2] due to
their higher energy densities, low cogging torque, low
cost and high mechanical torque for the PM generator
applications. [3,4]. PM generators have certain
advantages over the squarrel cage asynchronous or
current excited synchronous generators in terms of
high efficiency, stability and reliability [5].
In the literature, there exist two distinct PMG
groupings, namely axial flux and radial flux PMGs.
When the flux passes through the coils in radial
direction, this type is called as radial flux generator.
On the other hand, if the flux passes perpendicular to
the radial direction, it is called as axial flux generator
[6]. The axial flux machines are much appropriate for
medium speed applications [7]. Therefore they can be
widely used in machine parts, robotics, position-based
moment control, electrical vehicles, wind energy
generators, etc. In the wind energy applications they
have certin advantages since they do not require any
gear system in the turbine [1,8,9]. Although the rotor
speed and power density do not have a basic
correlation, axial flux machines have various power
densities from 6 kW/m3 to 700 kW/m3 [10].
978-1-4799-5479-7/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
Halil GÖR
Electrical and Electronics Engineering
Faculty of Engineering, Hakkari University
Hakkari, Turkey
halilgor@hakkari.edu.tr
In the machine design, the rotors must be durable
and undamaged at medium and high rotations. In
addition, the main problem for the stator unit is the
stator flux and the frequency of stator current [11].
However, these problems arise under high speeds and
they are avoidable. Although AFPMGs have lower
cogging torque, higher power density and efficiency,
easy maintanance, lower volume and cost [9,12,13-
16], the designs still focus on the enhancement of the
efficiency and electrical power. In additon, AFPMGs
have another problem, heating especially at high
speeds [17]. For instance, Li and his colleagues [14]
stated that high power density causes heating problems
in AFPMGS. Therefore an appropriate design should
be explored to cool down them efficiently. In order to
do it, there exist anumber of ways. One concept is the
adjustment of airgap distance, since it asists to
decrease the cogging torque fluctuation, acustic noises
and mechanical vibrations [18]. Other is the shape of
the core since it affects the cogging torque. Another
concept is to decrease the losses in the machine. In this
manner, Vansompel and his colleagues [8] explored
the efficiency of an AFPMG in terms of core mass,
shape and lamination and supported their findings via
FEM. They also proved that the varying air gap
decreased the core losses within the rate of 8% [19].
In the light of above mentioned issues, an optimal
electromagnetic design for a generator is required for
its efficiency, cost, durability, power output and
weight. In this paper, we report an electromagnetic
design of a newly proposed machine. While Sec. II
mentions the design details, Sec. III presents the
electromagnetic simulations and transient solutions.
Finally, the concluding remarks are given in the
conclusions part.
II. ELECTROMAGNETIC DESIGIN OF AN AFPMG
In the electromagnetic design, the finite element
method (FEM) is used. Following the definition of the
simulation volume and machine units with the
corresponding meshes, the material characteristics are
adjusted to all units, for instance magnets, cores,
airgaps, coils, rotors and stator. Table 1 summarizes
the data for the electromagnetic simulations.
 40 Erol Kurt, Halil GÖR

TABLE I. DESIGN PARAMETERS OF THE MACHINE Figure 2. The B-H curve of core

Components Features
Inner radius of rotor R2 (mm) 75
Outer radius of rotor R2 (mm) 105
Inner radius of rotor R1 (mm) 120
Outer radius of rotor R1(mm) 150
Inner radius of stator disc (mm) 70
Outer radius of stator disc (mm) 155
Coil inner diameter (mm) 30
Coil outer diameter (mm) 40
Phase 3
Winding turns 200
Coil number 24
Wire diameter (mm) 0.75
Magnet type NdFeB
Magnet shape Circular
The meshed forms of stator and rotor are shown in
Magnet number 16 Fig. 3(a,b). While 66934 mesh cells are used in stator,
Magnet diameter (mm) 30 45778 mesh cells are used in rotors.
Magnet thickness (mm) 5
Core material M19
Figure 3. The meshed forms of (a) stator and (b) rotor units
Axially/ radially
Core type
laminated
Core number 12
Air gap (mm) 5

According to Table 1, the airgap is adjusted as 5

mm due to the elimination of the frictional problems.
However, it may be adjusted to 3 mm in the
magnetostatic simulations. The overall FPMG is
shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Design of the AFPMG

(a)

Two rotors (Fig. 1) are positioned on the upper and

lower sides of stator. The rotor-1 is located upward,
the rotor-2 is located downward. The cores and the
location of sample magnets are also seen in Fig. 1. In
the design, the rotors can move freely, while the stator
at the middle is stable. The machine has 24 circular (b)
coils located at the tips of 12 individual cores. It has A sample core which consists of 40 laminated
16 circular magnets in each rotor. layers with 0.5 mm thickness is shown in Fig. 4. In
The cooling of the machine can be made order to obtain a circular form, each layer has its
efficiently from two sides. In the design, the cores specific width. The machine has 12 cores in total.
assist to decrease the total reluctance. Since the
laminated cores are used, the core losses are Figure 4. The design of the core
minimized [8]. The B-H curve of the core material M-
19 is sketched in Fig. 2.
 Electromagnetic Design of a New Axial Flux Generator 41

It was proven in one of our previous study that this
geometry decreased the cogging torque of the machine
[20,21]. The adjacent core tips and magnets are
situated on the stator and rotor with an electrical angle
of 22.5 degrees in order to sustain a 3 phase output.
The magnets are 30 mm in diameter and 5 mm in
thicknessin this design.
Fig. 6 presents a representative flux plot for the no-
load case. It has been obtained at 1000 rpm. Each
colour represents one phase. Note that there exists a
perfect symmetry in the waveforms which confirms
the accuracy of the flux topology. Due to the circular
trajectory, the fluxes are obtained as sinusoidal
waveforms.

III. ELECTROMAGNETIC SIMULATION OF AFPMG Figure 6. Magnetic fluxes of phases at 1000 rpm
Due to the airgap, core geometry and the distances
of successive magnets, the flux topology of the
machine differs from the earlier ones. Initially, the
magnetostatic analysis of magnetic flux density B is
presented in Fig. 5. In the upper flux pattern, the flux
densities of two rotors and the stator at the middle are
shown. After each 22.5 degrees, four magnets come to
the same angular position with the cores. Therefore
these regions have the maximal flux on the cores.
Figure 5. Magnetic flux densities of (a) overall machine and (b) Fig. 7 shows a sample waveform from the transient
sample core. simulation for the no-load case. The amplitude of each
phase is obtained with the phase shift of 120 degrees
as usual. At this speed (i.e. 500 rpm), the maximal
peak to peak voltage is found as Vpp = 70.7V.

Figure 7. No-load output voltage waveform at the rotor speed

500 rpm

(a)

Although the simulations have been performed

upto 1000 rpm, the waveforms have preserved its
sinusoidal shape and the phase shift, perfectly. This
indicates that the machine design is stable for each
phase. Simulations can also be carried out for different
electrical loads. Here results for some ohmic loads are
summarized (Fig. 8). According to the transient
simulations, the maximal amplitudes increase upto V=
(b) 106 V at the load 40 ohms for 1000 rpm. However, the
In the core, the flux densities have different values maximal amplitude becomes 40 V at lower rotor
from 0.4 T to 0.9 T depending on the local geometry. speeds (i.e. 300 rpm) at the same load. While the
If two magnets move near the tips, the maximal fluxes speed decreases, the increament rate of the amplitude
are obtained at the tips (Fig. 5(b)). Since the airgaps also decreases smoothly.
contribute at the reluctances, the flux is limited to 0.9
T. While B gives the maximal value of 0.35 T in the Figure 8. Voltage vs ohmic load for different rotor speeds (300
airgap near the magnets, it decreases substantially to 0 rpm, 500 rpm and 1000 rpm)
T between the magnets in azimuthal direction. By
parametrical survey in electromagnetic simulations,
the cogging torque can also be calculated. According
to the analyzes, the maximal cogging torque value has
been found as 50 mN, which is fairly low value.
According to our previous analyzes [20], the phase
number of a machine also affects the maximal cogging
torque values. Because the cogging torque becomes
larger in a single phase machine compared to the three
phase machines.
 42 Erol Kurt, Halil GÖR
Fig. 9 gives the theoretical power estimation for
different ohmic loads in terms of different rotor
speeds.
Figure 9. Power vs. ohmic load at different speeds
It has been observed that the maximal voltage is
obtained at 1000 rpm for the electrical load of 40 ohm.
The maximum power is found as 421 W from the
simulations. Note that output power slightly decreases
beyond the load of 20 ohms at 300 rpm and 500 rpm.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
An electromagnetic design of a new axial flux
machine has been carried out. The new machine has
an innovative flux topology with 16 rare earth
permanent magnet and 24 windings with a specific
core structure. The airgap flux density is estimated as
0.35 T for 5 mm airgap. However, this value can be
increased further by decreasing the airgap. The rated
power has been measured as 421 W with the
efficiency of 94.3 %. The theoretical losses have been
calculated as 25,3W and the maximal cogging torque
value has been calculated as 50 mN. The power
density of the proposed generator has been calculated
as 28.5 kW/m3. In order to increase the efficiency
airgap should be decreased further.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors are grateful to Gazi University,
Scientific Researches Project Unit for the support of
this project under the Project Code: 07/2011-25 and
EWRES – European Workshop on Renewable Energy
Systems (20-29 Sep. 2013, Antalya, Turkey) for the
compilation of the research.
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