A novel compact structure of the three-phase virtual air gap controllable reactor

Virtual air gap controlled reactor (VGR) is an electrical device based on the working principle of the saturation in the iron cores. The magnetic permeability of the iron cores in the VGR can be changed smoothly by regulating the direct current in the exciting windings. The higher the magnetic permeability of the iron cores, the greater the inductance of the VGR is, and vice versa. Since the advantage of the inductance of the VGR can be adjusted smoothly, it results in wide applications in the power system, such as arc suppression coil, soft motor starter, reactive power compensator. However, the size of traditional VGR is large, so that it also needs large place for installation. In this work, the compact structure of the three-phase VGR based on the six limbs technology is proposed. The structure can greatly reduce the size of the VGR. The MAGNET software is used here to prove the effectiveness of this approach.