Methodology to Generate a Reluctance Network Applied to Permanent Magnet Synchronous Generators

Abstract This paper presents a methodology for the generation of a static reluctance network, with magnetomotive sources only in the rotor, applied in the analysis and design of surface mounted permanent magnet synchronous generators. In the analysis stage, this network can provide the magnetic flux in several points of the generator, enabling an estimate of the generator performance. In the design process, on the other hand, it provides the armature linkage flux and hence the induced EMF can be calculated. It is worth mentioning that the proposed methodology makes use of a good discretization level (high number of elements) on the teeth tips and in the air gap of the generator, in order to get better precision on the flux modeling of these regions. The main contribution of this paper is to present the development process of a static reluctance network applied to surface mounted permanent magnets synchronous generators with different dimensions. The proposed model has proved to be robust and flexible as it can be seen in the results. The reluctance network (RN) developed with the proposed methodology presented in this paper shows low variations of the magnetic flux values, when compared with finite element simulations.