Program for Finite Element Based Design of Rotor Permanent Magnet Flux Switching Machine

Electrical machine design today is faced with greater challenges due to development of new electrical machine topologies, new types of winding layouts and new materials. While the use of well established empirical based methods is limited to design of conventional machines, most new types of electrical machines are designed by using Computer-Aided-Design tools (CAD). With limited availability and performance of appropriate commercial tools, development of novel machine topologies largely depends on custom made programs. In this paper, the methodology for finite element (FE) design of RPMFS (Rotor Permanent Magnet Flux Switching) machines is presented. Based on the proposed methodology, a program is developed using the Octave FEMM (Finite Element Method Magnetics) toolbox. The program enables fast and efficient simulation and performance assessment of various RPMFS designs with different inputs, such as core dimensions, number of slots, poles and even phases, while the appropriate winding layout is automatically assembled based on these inputs.