A Simple and Efficient Quasi-3D Magnetic Equivalent Circuit for Surface Axial Flux Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machines

This paper presents a simple and efficient magnetic equivalent circuit (MEC) model for surface axial flux permanent magnet synchronous machines. The MEC model is used to solve all the electromagnetic properties of the machine including the no load, full load voltages, cogging torque, torque ripple, and stator iron core losses. Moreover, this approach can be extended for all surface permanent magnet synchronous machines. The main novelty of this approach is the development of a static system, which accounts for the rotation. The model takes into account the rotor rotation via time-dependent permanent magnet magnetization sources. The static system matrix facilitates a very fast solving. In addition, to take into account the three-dimensional (3-D) effect, a multislicing of the machine in the radial direction is done. This boosts the simulation time to only 60 s for six slices and 50 time steps including the nonlinear behavior of the stator elements with a great accuracy. Additionally, the number of elements in the MEC can be adjusted to reduce the computational time. This model is verified by means of 3-D and two-dimensional (2-D) multislice finite-element models. In addition, experimental validations are also provided at the end.