Simplified Brushless Wound Field Synchronous Machine Topology Based on a Three-Phase Rectifier

This paper proposes a novel simplified brushless wound field synchronous machine (BL-WFSM) topology based on an uncontrolled three-phase rectifier. The output of the rectifier is injected into the common point of the star-connected three-phase armature winding. This arrangement develops an armature MMF consisting of two components: the fundamental MMF, which is rotating in nature, and the harmonic pulsating magnetic field, which induces the harmonic current in the specially designed harmonic winding of the rotor. The induced harmonic current is rectified through the full-bridge rectifier, which excites the main rotor field to achieve brushless operation and produce torque while interacting with the main fundamental rotating field of the armature. The proposed brushless topology is simple as it involves a single three-phase rectifier which does not require any complicated control strategy. Furthermore, this topology is a cost-effective solution as compared to the conventional brushless WFSM topologies since it does not require any additional hardware component except for a typical rectifier. In addition, the performance of the proposed brushless topology is better than the existing three-phase rectifier-based brushless scheme in terms of efficiency, output torque, and torque ripple. The proposed simplified BL-WFSM topology is validated through 2-D finite element analysis (FEA) using JMAG-Designer 19.1 to obtain the output torque of the machine.