A magnetic equivalent circuit for automated design of wound-rotor synchronous machines

In this research, a magnetic equivalent circuit (MEC) model for population-based design (PBD) of salient-pole wound-rotor synchronous machines (WRSMs) is derived. The model includes a unique approach to represent fringing flux to the rotor poles based upon observations of flux paths seen in finite element solutions. In addition, the airgap flux tubes are simplified by including rotor fringing as separate static flux tubes. Finally, the flux tubes representing the rotor pole tip are selected to more effectively capture localized saturation. To enable rapid evaluation of design candidates, a mesh-based solution is applied to solve the MEC. A mesh approach is selected since it has been shown to have superior convergence properties compared to nodal-based models. The MEC model has been shown to match well with finite element (FE) models and measurements.