Design, Performance, and Testing of a Brushless Axial Flux Resolver Without Rotor Windings

Resolvers are electromagnetic position sensors that are widely used in industrial applications. In this paper, a novel axial flux resolver with a simple solid rotor is introduced for the first time. The stator of the proposed resolver has a disk type structure with two-phase distributed windings as signal windings and a concentric winding as an excitation winding. The rotor is a disc with a simple structure. Its width is 20° without any winding, and thus, the proposed resolver has the advantages of variable reluctance resolvers for having no winding on rotor and also its manufacturing process is much simpler than that of variable reluctance resolvers. The performance analysis of the proposed structure is simulated and optimized using a 3D time stepping finite element method. Then, a prototype is constructed based on the optimized dimensions and tested. Good agreement between the simulation and the experimental results validates the success of the proposed resolver.