Three-Dimensional Modeling of Permanents Magnets Synchronous Machines Using a 3D Reluctance Network

For electromagnetic actuators whose magnetic fields are three-dimensional, the use of the 3D finite element (FE) method is required. On the other hand, 3D FE analysis is expensive in computation time, especially for high power machines involving potentially high numbers of nodes. In this paper, a 3D reluctance network (RN) modeling approach is proposed for the pre-design of permanents magnets synchronous machines (PMSM). The RN model developed is used to model three types of electrical machines (linear machine, radial field rotating machine and axial field rotating machine). Our goal is to establish lightweight models for the pre-design of electrical machines. The performances (local and global quantities) of these machines are evaluated using this 3D RN modeling. The results obtained from this approach are validated by comparison with results issued from the 3D FE analyses.