Comparison of Methods for Permanent Magnet Eddy-Current Loss Computations With and Without Reaction Field Considerations in Axial Flux PMSM.

This paper presents an analytical solution of the eddy currents in the permanent magnets (PMs) in the axial flux PM synchronous machine using a coupled solution of Maxwell’s equations and electric circuit network. This is based on calculating the axial field in an accurate way on the surface of the PM. This method is able to consider the effect of armature field and slots. The eddy currents are obtained by imposing this solution on the PM which is modeled by a simple electric network. This network is composed of simple resistances and inductances. The inductances are used to model the reaction field effect of the eddy currents flowing through the PM and also the skin effect. To show this effect, the machine is excited with different sources at different speeds. In addition, a variant of the model is made that neglects the inductances, in order to show in which conditions this low-frequency approximation is acceptable. It is concluded from this paper that inclusion of the reaction field is necessary when the machine is excited by a pulsewidth modulated (PWM) current, while for a sinusoidal excitation, the reaction field effect has minor contributions to the total eddy losses. In addition, the reaction field has major influence at higher speeds rather than lower speeds for PWM injection. In conclusions, for a preliminary design, the resistance model without the reaction field computation would be enough for the calculation of the PM losses. The circuit model is also capable of obtaining the solution with PM segmentation. In this paper, different PM segments were studied from the circuit model and the finite-element (FE) model point of view. Compared with the FE model, the circuit model has the advantage of flexibility in geometrical machine parameters, less CPU time, and accurate results for the PM losses up to 10%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]