Design, analysis, control and application of permanent magnet brushless dual-memory machines

Abstract

Conventional PM machines have fixed PM excitation and can only perform flux-weakening by controlling the d-axis current. This current incurs the power dissipation and reduces the efficiency during flux-weakening operations. Memory machines change this situation by introducing the memory function, namely magnetizing or reversely magnetizing Al-Ni-Co PMs to change the air-gap flux density. This provides another new way to realizing flux-weakening. And the elimination of the flux-weakening d-axis current improves the overall efficiency. But the single-memory machines have lower power density due to the low-energy Al-Ni-Co PMs. By incorporating the memory concept and with the intention of improving the power density, the DC-excited PMBL dual-memory machines have been proposed and implemented, based on two kinds of PMs which are high-coercivity Nd-Fe-B PMs and low-coercivity Al-Ni-Co PMs. The Nd-Fe-B PMs provide a strong magnetic field to excite high air-gap flux density; while the Al-Ni-Co PMs can be forward magnetized to strengthen the magnetic field produced by Nd-Fe-B PMs or can be reversely magnetized to cancel that field. Consequently the air-gap flux density can be controlled within a wide range. A series of design principles on such kind of dual-memory machine are devised for guidance. The key design principles involve how to determine the number of salient poles on the stator and rotor, how to choose the surface areas and thicknesses of the two kind of PM pieces and how to size the rotor dimension. Generally, increase on the proportion of Nd-Fe-B PMs will raise the base field and the load capacity. On the other hand, increment on the proportion of Al-Ni-Co PMs will extend the controllable flux range. Analysis is also carried out on the equivalent magnetic circuit to formulate the magnetizing force exerted on Al-Ni-Co PMs. The machine model is analyzed by using time-stepping FEM (TS-FEM) and co-simulation of FEM software and Matlab Simulink. The dynamic reverse magnetizing processes are simulated and presented in details under different magnetizing current. In addition the effect of adding iron bridges between the two kinds PMs is also evaluated by simulations. Furthermore, the control methods are evaluate by simulations and experiments. The direct torque control (DTC) scheme is adapted to this doubly-salient dual-memory machine and a torque estimator is proposed to facilitate the DTC method. Both of the simulation results and the experimental results confirm the validity of the proposed design principles and the effectiveness of the control methods. Eventually, this dual-memory machine is proposed as a pole-changing wind power generator and a pole-changing EV machine. Simulation and experimental results have verified the validity of the pole-changing scheme and the pole-protection scheme.