Investigation of an Improved Hybrid-Excitation Flux-Switching Brushless Machine for HEV/EV Applications

In this paper, based on 2-D finite-element analysis (FEA), the hybrid-excitation principle of a hybrid-excitation flux-switching (HEFS) machine is analyzed, and consequently, an improved topology is proposed to enhance the flux-regulation capability. These two machines are termed as the basic HEFS machine and the improved HEFS machine, respectively. In the basic HEFS machine, each permanent magnet (PM) is located at the middle of the corresponding slot and wound by a field winding coil. When field excitation is applied, it is found that the currents in the two field slots adjoining each PM exhibit reversal excitation functions, thus reversal flux-regulation functions. Hence, to improve the flux-regulation performances, an improved HEFS topology is proposed based on the basic one by reversing current direction in one of the field slots. Therefore, the improved topology shares identical structure with the basic one but has different field current directions in some field slots and thus different field winding accommodations. Comparisons of the FEA predictions indicated that both armature no-load flux-regulation capability and armature load torque capability in the improved HEFS machine are much better than those in the basic one. Finally, the FEA results are validated by experimental measurements on two prototyped HEFS machines.