Performance investigations of flux switching machines for light weight electric vehicles

An interest in electric vehicles (EVs) from automakers, governments and customers due to concerns on the environment makes it as more attractive research. Since electric motors are the core of EVs, it is a pressing need for researchers to develop advanced electric motors. As one of the candidates, flux switching machine (FSM) is introduced in order to cope with the requirement. This paper outlines an investigation of 3 FSM configurations namely permanent magnet (PM) FSM, field excitation (FE) FSM and hybrid excitation (HE) FSM. Initially, the machine general construction, operating principle and design concept of proposed machines are described. Next, coil arrangement test, 3-phase flux linkage, back emf, cogging torque, output torque and power of all machines are analyzed and compared by two-dimensional finite element analysis (2D-FEA). The simulated result shows that the proposed PMFSM machine attains its highest output torque performances of 25.74 Nm at maximum Ja of 30Arms/mm², significantly 32.3% better than the HEFSM topology which comes in second place.