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This paper proposes a six-phase surface-mounted permanent-magnet machine with a 24-slot/10-pole fractional slot winding, which not only eliminates the air-gap flux subharmonics, but also minimizes the effect of slot harmonics, which highly affect both the core and magnet losses. The six-phase winding design also offers an improved drive train availability for electric vehicle applications due to its inherent high fault-tolerant capability. When compared with a three-phase design, the proposed winding offers approximately 3.5% improvement in torque density, a significant reduction in both the core and magnet losses, and an improved overall efficiency. The proposed winding is deduced based on the stator shifting concept of two 12-slot/10-pole stators with single tooth windings. The coil span of the resulting machine will be two slots, which stands as a compromise between single tooth and distributed windings. The concept of stator shifting is first presented, and then, a prototype machine is designed and simulated using the 2-D finite-element analysis to validate the proposed concept. A comparative study is also carried out to compare six-phase and three-phase designs with the same slot/pole combination and also with the 18-slot/10-pole combination, which was recently shown to be a competitive alternative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the main drawbacks of nonoverlapped coils in fractional slot concentrated winding permanent magnet (PM) machines are the high eddy current losses in both rotor core and permanent magnets induced by the asynchronous harmonics of the armature reaction field. It has been shown in the literature that the reduction of low space harmonics can effectively reduce the rotor eddy current losses. This paper shows that employing a combined star-delta winding to a three-phase PM machine with fractional slot windings and with a number of slots equal to 12, or its multiples, yields a complete cancellation to the fundamental magneto-motive force (MMF) component, which significantly reduces the induced rotor eddy current. Besides, it offers a slight increase in machine torque density. A case study on the well-known 12-slot/10-pole PM machine is conducted to explore the proposed approach. With the same concept, the general $n$ -phase PM machine occupying $4n$ slots and with a dual $n$ -phase winding is then proposed. This configuration offers a complete cancelation of all harmonics below the torque producing MMF component. Hence, the induced eddy currents in both rotor core and magnets are significantly reduced. The winding connection and the required number of turns for both winding groups are also given. The concept is applied to a 20-slot/18-pole stator with a dual five-phase winding, where the stator winding is connected as a combined star/pentagon connection. The proposed concept is assessed through a simulation study based on 2-D finite element analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]