Advanced modeling of segmented Halbach cylinder for ironless brushless permanent-magnet two-phase motor

Abstract

Compared with conventional permanent magnet (PM) cylinders, Halbach magnet cylinders have the advantage of strengthening the magnetic field on one side and canceling the field on the other side of the magnet structure. Outer-rotor radial-flux brushless ironless PM machines using a Halbach cylinder, therefore, can have a higher torque density compared with the ironless PM machines using a conventional magnet cylinder with the same magnet and coil volume and same air gap. For outer-rotor Halbach cylinder motors, existing designs usually take advantage of the fundamental harmonics of the magnetic field to obtain a linear toque model and to avoid the torque ripples from the higher-order field harmonics. To achieve this, the Lorentz coils must be placed where the fundamental harmonics of the field is dominant and the higher order harmonics can be negligible. With this, the coils should be sufficiently far from the magnet cylinder’s surface. However, how far the coils should be (from the magnet) is not clarified from the reported designs. To provide guidance on where to optimally place the Lorentz coils and to make the best use of the Halbach cylinders, there is a critical need for a simple but comprehensive analysis to find out all the field harmonics everywhere for both the ideal and segmented Halbach cylinders. This work is to provide that analysis.