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size and a very large number of poles because of the low speed
I. INTRODUCTION of machine translator, which is equal to that of the recipro-
I N recent years, a variety of new wave energy conversion cating wave motion. So, some special machines which can offer
devices have been presented with increasing concerns on low-speed operation have been proposed in recent years such as
clean and renewable energy. Due to the low and reciprocating the magnetic-geared machine [1], transverse flux PM machine
nature of wave motion, most of them adopt mechanical gears [2], vernier machine [3], vernier hybrid machine [4] to improve
and linear-to-rotary mechanisms such as Wells turbine and hy- the power density.
draulics to couple with conventional high-speed rotary elec- A new class of linear stator PM vernier (LSPMV) machines
trical generators. Compared with the conventional rotary drive has been presented in [5] as shown in Fig. 1. Based on the mag-
system, the direct-drive system possesses the potential to re- netic gear effect, this machine utilizes the translator teeth to
duce the number of energy transformation steps and requires modulate the stationary magnetic field produced by PMs to the
fewer moving parts since the translator of the linear generator high-speed traveling magnetic field in the airgap. Thus, the mag-
is coupled with the wave energy device directly. Consequently, nitude and frequency of the induced electromotive force (EMF)
the efficiency can be improved and the volume of the whole of the machine, which are proportional to the rate of change of
system is expected to be reduced. However, the electrical ma- the flux linkage, can achieve relatively large values even under
chine in the direct-drive system usually suffers from a bulky a very low operation speed. Hence, the LSPMV machine can
realize low-speed operation and high-speed machine design si-
Manuscript received September 04, 2011; accepted January 12, 2012. Date of
multaneously, which is very suitable for the direct-drive system.
publication March 05, 2012; date of current version May 24, 2012. This work However, because of the finite permeance of the translator teeth,
was supported and funded in part by grants (Project 50907031) from the Na- the LSPMV machine inevitably suffers from severe flux leakage
tional Natural Science Foundation of China, a grant (Project BK2010013) from
Innovative Scholars Climbing Program of Jiangsu Province, China, and a grant
which deteriorates the performance significantly.
from “333 Program” of Jiangsu Province, China. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new linear stator
Y. Du is with the School of Electrical Engineering, Southeast University, PM vernier high-temperature superconductor (LSPMV-HTS)
Nanjing, China, and the School of Electrical and Information Engineering,
Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China. machine which can offer high power density while directly
K. T. Chau and F. Li are with the Department of Electrical and Electronic and effectively capture the reciprocating wave energy. In Sec-
Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. tion II, the machine configuration will be described briefly. In
M. Cheng and Y. Fan are with the School of Electrical Engineering, Southeast
University, Nanjing, China (e-mail: mcheng@seu.edu.cn). Section III, the design principle of the proposed machine will
W. Zhao is with the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, be discussed. In Section IV, its characteristics will be analyzed
Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China. by using the finite element method (FEM). Also, it will be
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. quantitatively compared with the existing LSPMV machine,
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TASC.2012.2185473 hence justifying the use of HTS bulks and verifying the merits
Fig. 2. Configuration of proposed LSPMV-HTS machine. • The permeability of the iron core of the stator and the trans-
lator is infinite.
• The relative permeability of the HTS bulks is zero.
of high power density. At last, the conclusion will be drawn in • Finite coercivities are ignored.
Section V. • The variation of magnetic field is in the direction only.
Based on the aforementioned assumptions, the equivalent
II. MACHINE CONFIGURATION magnetic circuit of the machine can be depicted as Fig. 3. So,
the magnetic flux density excited by the PMs in the airgap can
The configuration of the proposed LSPMV-HTS machine is
be expressed as:
shown in Fig. 2, which is composed of a stator and a trans-
lator. It adopts a double-sided design and inner-translator ar- (1)
rangement where the stator is vertically mounted on the seabed
and the translator is vertically coupled with the reciprocating where is the magnetic flux density in the airgap, is the
buoy floating on the surface of the sea. The stator consists of MMF provided by the PMs and is the magnetic permeance per
two plane iron cores with salient teeth wound with 3-phase ar- unit area in the direction.
mature copper windings and neodymium iron boron (NdFeB) The PMs are mounted on the surface of the stator teeth. Thus
PMs mounted on the surface of the stator teeth. The magnetiza- the MMF distribution of the PMs is stationary and can be ex-
tion directions of these PMs alternate down the stator. Thus the pressed in a Fourier series. Taking the axis as the centerline
magnetic flux in the airgap is almost sinusoidal. The translator of one of the PMs, it yields:
which is sandwiched between the two stator sides is designed as
an iron core with salient teeth on the two sides, while the HTS
bulks are inset between every two adjacent salient teeth. Ac- (2)
cording to the Meissner effect, the relative permeability of the
HTS bulk is almost zero [6] when the operation temperature is where is the permeability of the free space, and are
below the critical temperature. So, the flux leakage in this area the remanence and the relative permeability of the PMs, respec-
can be shielded and the power density of the machine can be tively, is the length of the PMs in the magnetization di-
improved consequently. rection, is the number of the PM pole-pairs and is the
The refrigeration is realized by circulating liquid nitrogen that active length of the machine.
is led in through cooling pipes which are appressed along the The translator teeth function to modulate the permeance in
HTS bulks in the translator iron core. So, the operation temper- the airgap in this machine. The relative movement between the
ature can be regulated at around 77 K to insure that the HTS permeance and MMF distributions due to the movement of the
bulks work properly. Considering the reciprocating motion of translator leads to the desired flux variation. Thus the induced
the translator, the cooling pipes are connected with the refriger- EMF can be generated in the stator windings. The magnetic per-
ation system through the soft tube which can be stretched and meance per unit area can be expressed as:
compressed with the reciprocating motion of the translator. The
super insulation, which is composed of a vacuum chamber and
a thermal shield, functions to minimize the penetration of con- (3)
vection heat and radiation heat. This insulation is considered to
be good enough to avoid from possible condensation and ice
formation in the airgap. where and are the mag-
netic reluctances per unit area of the PMs and the airgap in the
direction, respectively, is the magnetic reluctance per
III. DESIGN PRINCIPLE unit area of the translator teeth and slots in the direction which
Fig. 3 shows the model of the LSPMV machine. In order to is a function of the position and is the length of the airgap.
simplify the derivation of the analytical model, the following Based on the same assumptions, the waveform of the mag-
assumptions are made: netic permeance of the LSPMV machine in the direction can
DU et al.: LINEAR STATOR PERMANENT MAGNET VERNIER HTS MACHINE FOR WAVE ENERGY CONVERSION 5202505
(4)
(5)
(6)
Fig. 7. Thrust force versus translator tooth ratio. Fig. 9. Cogging force waveforms of LSPMV-HTS and LSPMV machines.
TABLE I
KEY PARAMETERS OF LSPMV-HTS AND LSPMV MACHINES
for low-speed and high-thrust force application, especially the [2] J. Wang, K. T. Chau, J. Z. Jiang, and C. Yu, “Design and analysis of
wave energy generator. a transverse flux permanent magnet machine using three dimensional
scalar magnetic potential finite element method,” Journal of Applied
It should be noted that the real use of this machine requires Physics, vol. 103, no. 7, pp. 1–3, 2008, paper no. 7F107.
balancing the gain in increased EMF to the cost of HTS mate- [3] A. Toba and T. A. Lipo, “Novel dual-excitation permanent magnet
rial and cryogenic environment. So a complete cost analysis is vernier machine,” in IAS Annual Meeting, 1999, pp. 2539–2544.
[4] E. Spooner, P. Tavner, M. A. Mueller, P. R. M. Brooking, and N. J.
required before practical applications. Baker, “Vernier hybrid machines for compact drive applications,” in
IEE Conf. Power Electron., Mach. Drives, 2004, pp. 452–457.
[5] Y. Du, K. T. Chau, M. Cheng, Y. Fan, Y. Wang, W. Hua, and Z. Wang,
REFERENCES “Design and analysis of linear stator permanent magnet vernier ma-
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a magnetic-geared outer-rotor permanent-magnet brushless motor for [6] W. Li, K. T. Chau, and J. Li, “Simulation of a tubular linear magnetic
electric vehicles,” IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 43, no. 6, pp. 2504–2506, gear using HTS bulks for field modulation,” IEEE Trans. Appl. Super-
2007. cond., vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 1167–1170, 2011.