Design and Construction of a Wave Energy Conversion Magnetic Gear with a 16.5: 1 Gear Ratio

This paper presents the design and construction details for a 16.5:1 gear ratio coaxial magnetic gear for use in a wave energy converter. A systematic analytic based sizing method is used to design the coaxial magnetic gear. This allowed the magnetic gear parameters, that maximized the mass torque density, to be determined through a limited targeted number of 2-D and 3-D finite element design parameter sweeps. The final magnetic gear design is computed to achieve an active region mass and volumetric torque density of 110Nm/kg and 254 Nm/L respectively. The mechanical design and the experimental prototype details are also presented.