Detent force compensation in segmented long stator permanent magnet linear drives using Finite Element Models

Detent force is a typical drawback of linear permanent magnet (PM) machines, particularly when accurate positioning or constant low speed is required. This paper proposes a compensation for the detent force using feed forward quantities obtained from finite element models (FEM). Two control strategies are tested, the traditional field oriented control and indirect flux control, both using feed forward quantities from FEM. An experimental setup with a segmented long stator permanent magnet linear machine is used to build the FEM. Finally the control strategies are tested and compared.