PM Assisted, Brushless Wound Rotor Synchronous Machine

This paper presents a new permanent magnet (PM) assisted topology for a recently introduced brushless wound rotor synchronous machine (BL-WRSM). The BL-WRSM had a dual-inverter configuration for generating a composite magneto motive force (MMF) with a fundamental component and a subharmonic component. The subharmonic component of the MMF is used for brushless excitation of the rotor. In this paper, additional PMs were introduced on the rotor of the BL-WRSM, making it a hybrid BL-WRSM. We also discussed the flux weakening operation for the hybrid BL-WRSM. The hybrid BL-WRSM offered advantages for starting the machine and provided better performance under full-load conditions. The finite element method (FEM) was used to analyze the performance of the hybrid BL-WRSM, and we compared its performance with BL-WRSM. Finally, prototypes were built with and without the PM-assistance, and experiments were conducted to demonstrate their performance.