Design and analysis of a novel rotor-segmented axial-field switched reluctance machine

As excitation strategy is influenced by the parity of phase number, and serious end effect is caused by full pitch windings adopted by the conventional rotor-segmented switched reluctance machine (RS-SRM), a novel rotor-segmented axial-field switched reluctance machine (RS-AFSRM), which adopts concentrated windings, is proposed in this paper, whose control strategy is independent of the parity of phase number. The stator of the proposed RS-AFSRM consists of inner and outer flux-conductive ring, excitation poles, and stator yoke, while the rotor consists of fan-shape cylinder-type segments. The structure and principle of the proposed machine is introduced through the magnetic circuit model of the machine. The fringing effect on air-gap field is considered. The simplified magnetic circuit considering the fringing effect is presented and the fringing effect coefficient is introduced. The design procedure considering the fringing effect through iterative modification is presented in this paper and is validated through 3D finite-element method (3D-FEM). Results show that both magnetic field distribution and operation are reasonable and satisfy the requirements.