Design and Analysis of Halbach Ironless Flywheel BLDC Motor/Generators

Halbach array-based permanent magnet (PM) brushless machines exhibit attractive features when compared with conventional PM brushless machines with normal segmented magnets, including the flux-concentration effect, essentially sinusoidal air-gap flux density due to PMs, and negligible cogging torque. However, as for a motor/generator used in flywheel, an external rotor composed of Halbach array and rotor back-iron is necessary to increase the inertia of flywheel system, which is different from the conventional external-rotor machines. In this paper, a Halbach array PM motor is studied compared with the radial magnet array. The relationship between the air-gap field distribution and the magnet array is discussed. Finally, the eddy current loss in PMs of the external-rotor ironless brushless dc motor is analyzed between the Halbach PM motor and the conventional PM motor.