Modeling of salient-pole wound-rotor synchronous machines for population-based design

In recent years, population-based methods (evolutionary algorithms, particle swarm methods, etc.) have emerged as an effective tool for component and system design. Although relatively straightforward to apply, to capitalize on their potential, one must be able to explore a large design space. Herein a magnetic equivalent circuit model is described to enable large-design-space exploration of salient-pole wound-rotor synchronous machine drive systems. Specifically, the model has been derived to evaluate machines with an arbitrary number of poles, stator slots (integer slots/pole/phase), winding layout, magnetic material, and a wide range of stator and rotor geometries. In addition, the model and solution technique have been structured to minimize the computational effort. An important attribute of the model is that saturation is handled with relatively few iterations and without the need for a relaxation factor to obtain convergence.