2019 22nd International Conference on Electrical Machines and Systems (ICEMS)

Novel Partitioned Stator Dual-PM Flux-Switching Permanent Magnet

Machine with Mechanically Continuously Flux Adjusting Capability
Liang Li, Student member, IEEE, Dawei Li*, Member, IEEE, Ronghai Qu, Fellow, IEEE
State Key Laboratory of Advanced Electromagnetic Engineering and Technology, School of Electrical and
Electronic Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
*daweili@hust.edu.cn

Abstract—A novel partitioned stator dual-PM Flux- its application. A novel partitioned stator dual-PM FSPM
switching permanent magnet (PM) machine with mechanically machine with mechanically continuously flux adjusting
continuously flux adjusting capability is proposed and analyzed capability is proposed in this paper, of which the PM flux
for applications which demand large speed range and high level can be regulated continuously without increasing the
efficiency. This is a novel concept of mechanically adjusted
machine diameter.
variable-flux (MVF) for flux-switching permanent magnet
(FSPM) machines, and it can achieve the same effect as the flux- Another advantage of the proposed machine is the
weakening control in electric vehicles. Two arrays of PMs are permanent magnet flux can be adjusted to be very low, which
inserted into the outer stator and inner stator respectively, and is close to zero. When used as a generator, the proposed
the only one set of winding is placed in the outer stator. The machine can de-excite the PM linkage to avoid further
outer stator is fixed while the inner stator is rotatable, and the damage under short-circuit fault condition. This is of great
PM flux could be regulated continuously by adjusting the importance for generator system in [10].
relative position of inner stator and outer stator. The flux
weakening capability and other electromagnetic performances
II. STRUCTURE AND OPERATION PRINCIPLE
of the proposed machine are investigated by 2D-FEA analysis.
The proposed partitioned stator dual-PM FSPM machine is
Keywords—flux-switching permanent magnet (FSPM) shown in Fig. 1. As shown, it is composed of 3 parts: outer
machine, dual-PM, partitioned stator, flux weakening, stator, inner stator and rotor between them. The only one set
mechanically adjusted variable-flux (MVF), electric vehicles
of winding is placed in the outer stator, which looks quite like
the partitioned stator FSPM machine, but there are two arrays
I. INTRODUCTION
of PMs that are inserted into the outer stator and inner stator
Flux switching permanent magnet (FSPM) machine is respectively. The inner stator is rotatable. When the PM flux
drawing more and more interest due to its high power density needs to change, the inner stator will be rotated to a specific
and simple mechanical structure short end-winding length, position and then it will be fixed again. It should be
simple and robust rotor structure, etc., in the recent decades mentioned that the waveform of no-load back-EMF stays
[1]. Many researchers have investigated FSPM for
sinusoidal while the inner stator rotates and the PM flux
applications like electric vehicles, traction motors, low-speed
changes.
and direct-drive motors, in-wheel traction [2]-[5]. Due to the
It is interesting that the proposed machine can be regarded
“magnetic gearing effect”, FSPM can exhibit high torque at
low rotation speed [6]. The flux-modulation machine without as the superposition of two PM machine: the FSPM machine
reluctance torque is often driven by zero d-axis current (Id=0) of outer stator, and the partitioned stator FSPM machine of
[3]. For general FSPM machine, the Maximum Torque per inner stator. So the no-load back-EMF is the integration of
Ampere (MTPA) control is just zero d-axis current (Id=0) the two PM machines. Since the no-load back-EMF of both
control, but when working at high speed, flux-weakening the FSPM machine of outer stator and inner stator is
control is adopted. sinusoidal, the no-load back-EMF of the proposed machine is
Being a promising member of stator-PM brushless AC highly sinusoidal. But harmonics still exists while inner stator
motors, FSPM machine has another advantage that the flux rotates, especially when the total PM flux is weak.
of permanent magnet is easy to be adjusted by mechanical
method. Because the permanent magnet is in the stator which
is not rotatable, by using mechanical method, the PM flux
level can be regulated to extend the speed range and improve
the flux weakening capability of the PM machines [7], and
they allow flexibility in terms of optimizing machine
efficiency across its torque-speed envelope [8]. Mechanical
variable-flux machines are those variable-flux topologies
which utilize a mechanical means to adjust the flux, and many
mechanically adjusted topologies have been investigated [9],
both on rotor and stator.
A FSPM machine with mechanically movable flux
adjusting technique is proposed in [2], but the flux adjusters
increase the diameter of the whole machine system, and the
PM flux could not be regulated continuously, which restricted

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of Fig. 1. partitioned stator dual-PM FSPM machine
China under Project Number 51520105010.

978-1-7281-3398-0/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE

978-1-7281-3398-0/19/$31.00
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 2019 22nd International Conference on Electrical Machines and Systems (ICEMS)

so I d produces extra copper loss and has lower efficiency

One advantage of mechanically adjusted variable-flux
compared with flux-weakening control is lower copper loss,
and the reason is illustrated in the following. As is mentioned
above, the proposed partitioned stator dual-PM FSPM
machine has no reluctance torque, so the equivalent circuit
diagram and phasor diagram of Non-salient-pole
synchronous motor can be adopted to analyze the proposed
FSPM machine, where E0 means the no-load back-EMF, Xs
means the synchronous reactance, Ra means the armature
resistance, U means the phase voltage, Id is the d-axis current,
and Iq is the q-axis current.
Xs Ra
I flux in great detail.
E0
compared with I d =0 control method.
The back-EMF of the proposed mechanically adjusted
variable-flux PM machine is adjustable, so that I d =0
control method can still be adopt in the high speed region.
III. FLUX WEAKENING PERFORMANCE
As shown in Fig.2, by changing the inner stator position,
the PM flux of the proposed partitioned stator dual-PM FSPM
machine will be changed, and the respective open-circuit
back-EMF waveform is still sinusoidal. This is vali dated by
using 2D-FEA method. The PM flux is adjusted by
rotating the inner stator and the mechanic circle are 60
degrees. Fig. 4 - Fig. 9 show the process to weaken the PM
U

Fig. 2. equivalent circuit diagram of the proposed machine

IXs IXs

E0 E0

U
U
I Iq
I
Φpm Φpm
Id

(a) Id=0 control (b) flux-weakening control

Fig. 3. phasor diagram of the proposed machine Fig. 4.open-circuit flux line distribution at 0-degree-rotate

As is known to us all, Ra is often negligible compared

with Xs, so Ra is not considered in Fig.3 to simplify the
situation. We can get the voltage equation from Fig. 2.
E0  jIX S  U (1)
let's multiply both sides by I , which means the conjugate
of I , and according to the principle of complex power
balance, we got
E0 I  jIX S I  U I (2)
according to the theorem of complex power balance, the real
part and imaginary part of the two side should be equal, so
we can get from (2) that :
E0 I cos  0  E0 I q  UI cos 
(3) Fig. 5. open-circuit flux density distribution at 0-degree-rotate
E0 I sin  0  I X S  E0 I d  I X S  UI sin 
2 2

We regard this position as 0-degree-rotate, which is the

where  and 0 is the phase angle of the voltage and max back-EMF position. We can see the iron core saturation
current respectively. is the most serious at this position from Fig. 5. The pole pairs
It is shown in (3) that I q contributes to the active power, of PM in the stator is 6, so we only need to study the rotate
range of 0~30 degree.
while I d only contributes to the reactive power and has no
effect on the generation of active power. But I d still generate
copper loss, which is the main part of the machine total loss,

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 2019 22nd International Conference on Electrical Machines and Systems (ICEMS)

As is shown in Fig. 3, the magnitude of PM flux in the

rotor teeth is lower and lower as the inner stator rotates, so
that the open-circuit back-EMF E0 is lower accordingly. We
can see the iron core saturation is the most serious at 0-
degree-rotate position, and the flux density around PM at 30-
degree-rotate is low, which means there is almost no risk of
demagnetization.
The main design parameters are shown in table I. This
design keeps the PM thickness the same, but for applications
without such limit, there are much more flexible design.

TABLE I
Main Design Parameters
Fig. 6. open-circuit flux line distribution at 15-degree-rotate
Item Value
Stator Slots 12
Rotor Slots 10
Winding pole pairs 4
Stator outer diameter(mm) 124
Stator inner diameter(mm) 74.4
Outer airgap length(mm) 0.84
Inner airgap length(mm) 0.6
Stator yoke thickness(mm) 5
Inner stator diameter(mm) 57.52
Rotor slot depth(mm) 7
PM thickness(mm) 3.65
Outer stator tooth width(mm) 14.51
Shaft diameter(mm) 0.6
Model length(mm) 36
PM material N38UH
Fig. 7. open-circuit flux density distribution at 15-degree-rotate 50WW470
Core material

By rotating the inner stator, the open-circuit back-EMF

will vary as shown in Fig.10. The Flux-Controllable Stator
Permanent Magnet Memory Motor in [11] is a way to adjust
the PM flux, but it is very complicate to design, especially at
the occasions when sensitivity analysis and multi-objective
optimization [12] is needed. By comparison, the proposed
machine is a much simple design.

Fig. 8. .open-circuit flux line distribution at 30-degree-rotate

Fig. 10. No-load back-EMF at different inner stator position

To evaluate the flux-weakening capability properly, a

new factor, K fw , has been defined as follows [7][13]:

Fig. 9. open-circuit flux density distribution at 30-degree-rotate

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 2019 22nd International Conference on Electrical Machines and Systems (ICEMS)
Ld I max
K fw =
PM
The maximum speed of flux-switching PM machine in [13]
is only 5.37 times the rated speed, but there is no limit for the
maximum speed of the proposed machine, because the PM
could be adjusted to zero.
Fig.11. fundamental and THD of E0 at different inner stator position
Fig.12. harmonic amplitude of E0 at different inner stator position
As is shown in Fig.11 and Fig.12, by changing the relative
position of the two stator, the PM flux can be adjusted, but
larger harmonics is introduced in this process.
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IV. CONCLUSION
It’s shown that the proposed partitioned stator dual-PM
FSPM machine could change the output PM flux
continuously, and this wouldn’t cause the increase in the total
machine volume. The proposed machine could achieve high
efficiency by adjusting the PM flux and reducing Id.
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