A Comprehensive Study of a Universal Non-Parametric Mesh Magnetic Reluctance Network Model for Radial Interior Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machines

In this paper a universal non-parametric mesh magnetic reluctance network (MRN) model has been proposed for the modelling of radial interior permanent magnet synchronous machines (PMSMs). The main idea of the proposed MRN is to generate the mesh directly by filling the geometry with two-flux-path sector elements automatically in the whole physical region. Then, the circuit topology, excitation vector, and incidence matrix are also formed automatically based on the non-parametric mesh, which are prerequisites for the following circuit analysis solved by nodal analysis. The proposed MRN model can accurately take the nonlinear material property, rotor movement, and period or anti-period boundaries into consideration. Electromagnetic performances and even the magnetic flux density distribution can be solved thoroughly by the proposed MRN model, which are as accurate as the results solved by finite element analysis (FEA). In addition, the non-parametric mesh MRN model is also proven to have powerful parallel computing potentials, and the convergence has been further strengthened by introducing a damping search algorithm and setting proper initial conditions in time-stepping analysis. Finally, the proposed MRN model has been verified by comparisons to both the experimental and FEA results. All these properties of the proposed universal MRN model make it a potential substitution for the FEA model.