Design study of a three-phase brushless exciter for aircraft starter/generator

This paper presents a design study of a 3-phase AC main exciter (ME) for an aircraft starter-generator. A computationally efficient methodology for optimizing the design of the ME is presented. The optimisation is carried out using coupled two-dimensional (2D) magnetostatic finite element solver and particle swarm optimisation procedure (PSO). The ME design is then analysed using 3D FE to account for the end-winding effects, and the results are fed into a lumped-parameter circuit model of the ME. The circuit model allows for the operating modes of the ME being analysed in a computationally efficient manner also accounting for non-linearities. The theoretical findings are experimentally validated on a prototype generator.