General Airgap Field Modulation Theory for Electrical Machines

Abstract

This paper proposes a general field modulation theory for electrical machines by introducing magnetomotive force modulation operator to characterize the influence of short-circuited coil, variable reluctance, and flux guide on the primitive magnetizing magnetomotive force distribution established by field winding function multiplied by field current along the airgap peripheral. Magnetically anisotropic stator and rotor behave like modulators to produce a spectrum of field harmonics and the armature winding plays the role of a spatial filter to extract effective field harmonics to contribute the corresponding flux linkage and induce the electromotive force. The developed field modulation theory not only unifies the principle analysis of a large variety of electrical machines, including conventional dc machine, induction machine, and synchronous machine which are just special cases of the general field modulated machines, thus eliminating the problem of the machine theory fragmentation, but also provides a powerful guidance for inventing new machine topologies.