IRONLESS PERMANENT MAGNET GENERATORS FOR DIRECT-DRIVEN OFFSHORE WIND TURBINES

Since the beginning of this century, the offshore wind power industry has witnessed fast development, as the result of the increasing awareness of climate change and the need for diversifying power supply. Offshore has vast area available with high wind speed, which is an ideal place for large-scale wind power exploitation. However, these advantages come with technological challenges. One of the key challenges is to develop high-power cost-effective wind turbines with high reliability. Previous publications have demonstrated the potential of using ironless permanent magnet generator (iPMG) to reduce the total weight and cost of a wind turbine. Unfortunately, before the start of the research reported in this thesis, there was no systematic investigation of the iPMG concepts. As shown in this thesis, if the traditional direct-driven high-power iron-cored PMG is used for offshore wind turbines, instead of iPMG concept, a significant amount of the total weight goes to the supporting structures (inactive parts). The supporting structures maintain the machine reliability by counter-reacting to various forces, such as the machine gravity, electromagnetic torque, rotor-to-stator force (for iron-cored machine), rotor-torotor force (if there are multiple rotors), and force caused by faults. The “secret” of iPMG roots at the negligible normal stress between its rotor and stator (active parts). By using non-magnetic material in the stator, the rotor will not exert attracting force on stator. Having low rotor-to-stator force means lower requirement to the supporting structures, i.e., the supporting structures can be lightweight and low-cost. Due to the low air gap field and thus low tangential stress, iPMG has low torque production. Therefore, iPMG is normally designed with large diameter to produce higher torque with longer force arm. Classical machine design theory has concluded that the machine torque is roughly proportional to its volume. A large-diameter iPMG will therefore have short axial length, which means small aspect ratio (the machine axial length divided by its outer diameter). This ring-shape feature requires 3D approach to analyse the magnetic and thermal fields. Traditionally, it is a common practice to do machine preliminary design and optimization with analytical methods. The 2D or even 3D finite element method (FEM) is considered to be accurate but time-consuming, though the performances of computing codes and hardware are being steadily improved. Multi-core computers and distributed-memory clusters are normally available to most machine designers. Some academic users even have the access to super computers. The objective of this research is to investigate the iPMG technologies with the help of advanced modelling approaches. The main results reported in this thesis are • An overview of the ironless permanent magnet machines (iPMM) (Chapter 1). • A comprehensive overview of the generator technologies for operational offshore wind turbines, the comparison of the efficiencies for different drive trains, and a review of the new generator concepts (Chapter 2). • A method for evaluating the goodness of any generator design and predicting the generator total weight, and a design and optimization strategy for investigating the weight variation of iron-cored high-power PMGs (Chapter 3). • A design and optimization strategy for investigating the performances of various single-stage and multi-stage iPMGs (Chapter 4 and 5). • A comparison of 10-MW iron-cored PMG and iPMG (Chapter 4). • A 3D multiphysics design approach where all the calculations are done with open source codes (Chapter 6). • An investigation of the machine efficiency improvement with the instantaneous ABC theory borrowed from power system theory (Chapter 7). It is also the aim to explore the frontier of machine modelling techniques. In this thesis, different calculation codes are used, including both open source codes and commercial codes. The machine modelling covers 1D, 2D, and 3D approaches. The computing resources used range from ordinary PCs, multiple workstations, a computing server, and a super computer (tried). To assist this research and other computation-demanding projects, a scientific computing lab was built with the financial support from the Department of Electric Power Engineering. The modelling approach was validated with an existing 23-kW axial-flux iPMG provided by SmartMotor AS. The main conclusions are: Geared drive trains with induction generators are the dominant solutions in offshore wind farms. Direct-driven iron-cored PMGs are heavy and expensive, and most of the weight and cost go to their inactive parts, which makes this solution not weight-/cost-effective. iPMMs are normally used in low-power (several kW) high-speed (above 1000 rpm) applications. Using iPMM technology in high-power (e.g. 10 MW) low-speed (e.g. 12 rpm) offshore wind turbines can significantly reduce the generator cost and weight. It is preferred to build a machine at single stage rather than multiple stages in terms of torque density and efficiency. For a single-stage iPMG solution, two-rotor conventional-array PMGs have the optimal performances among all the investigated topologies, and the performance difference between radial flux and axial flux PMGs gets reduced when their outer diameters are greater than 25 m. Multi-stage solution may outperform the single-stage solution, if the machine outer diameter is constrained and the design has multiple objectives. At 10 MW level, a 12-rpm single-stage iPMG with a diameter of 20 m is lighter and less expensive than a 12-rpm iron-cored PMG with a diameter of 9.9 m. Even though the state of the art commercial finite-element-analysis and genetic-algorithm codes are used, and the specially developed design and optimization strategy can reduce the total calculation time, it takes a week to ten days to solve an optimization with five free variables. A 3D multiphysics design and optimization strategy can take into account the effects due to small aspect ratio of iPMGs, and executing such a strategy with open source codes on a super computer can reduce the computational cost, but it is still a challenge to parallelize the calculation and optimization. An active shunt filter controlled with the instantaneous ABC theory can reduce the generator loss, but the system efficiency is not significantly improved. Nonetheless, it is still attractive to use the diode rectifier in a converter as a trade-off of cost, reliability, and power yield

Design of high-power ultra-high-speed permanent magnet machine

The demand for ultra-high-speed machines (UHSM) is rapidly growing in high-tech industries due to their attractive features. A-mechanically-based-antenna (AMEBA) system is another emerging application of UHSM. It enables portable wireless communication in the radio frequency (RF)-denied environment, which was not possible until recently. The AMEBA system requires a high-power (HP) UHSM for its effective communication performance. However, at the expected rotational speed range of 0.5 to 1 million rpm, the power level of UHSM is limited, and no research effort has succeeded to improve the power level of UHSM. The design of HP-UHSM is highly iterative, and it presents several critical challenges, unlike low-power UHSM, such as critical-bending-resonance (CBR), strong mutual influence among Multiphysics performances, exponential air-friction loss, and material limitation. When the magnetic loading of the UHSM rotor is increased to improve the power level, the rotor experiences serious mechanical vibration due to the excessive centrifugal forces and CBR. This vibration limits the operation of HP-UHSM and leads to structural breakdown. Furthermore, the design process becomes more critical when it considers the multidisciplinary design constraints and application requirements. This dissertation proposed a new Multiphysics design method to develop HP-UHSM for critical applications. First, the critical design constraints which prevent increasing the output power of UHSM are investigated. Then, a Multiphysics optimization model is developed by coupling several multidisciplinary analysis modules. This proposed optimization model enables (i) defining multidisciplinary design constraints, (ii) consideration of Multiphysics mutual influence, and (iii) a trade-off analysis between the efficiency and design-safety-margin. The proposed design model adopts the multiphase winding system to effectively increase the electrical loading in the slotless stator. Finally, a 2000 W 500,000 rpm HP-UHSM is optimized for an AMEBA system using the proposed design method. The optimized 2 kW 500,000 rpm machine prototype and its dynamo setup are built in the laboratory. Extensive finite element simulations and experimental testing results are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed design method. The results show that the proposed HP-USHM has 94.5% efficiency, 47 kW/L power density, 30% global design safety margin at the maximum speed and no CBR frequency below 11 kHz

Design and Application of Electrical Machines

Electrical machines are one of the most important components of the industrial world. They are at the heart of the new industrial revolution, brought forth by the development of electromobility and renewable energy systems. Electric motors must meet the most stringent requirements of reliability, availability, and high efficiency in order, among other things, to match the useful lifetime of power electronics in complex system applications and compete in the market under ever-increasing pressure to deliver the highest performance criteria. Today, thanks to the application of highly efficient numerical algorithms running on high-performance computers, it is possible to design electric machines and very complex drive systems faster and at a lower cost. At the same time, progress in the field of material science and technology enables the development of increasingly complex motor designs and topologies. The purpose of this Special Issue is to contribute to this development of electric machines. The publication of this collection of scientific articles, dedicated to the topic of electric machine design and application, contributes to the dissemination of the above information among professionals dealing with electrical machines