Design of Novel Axial-Flux Dual Stator Doubly Fed Reluctance Machine

Abstract

The most well-known application of a doubly fed machine is probably the use of a doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) with a wind turbine. A clear drawback to the use of DFIGs is the need for slip rings to supply power to the rotor circuit, which may result in increased operation and maintenance cost [1]. Nowadays, the brushless doubly fed reluctance machines (BDFRMs) have been developed as a class of machines that is controlled using a power converter that has a rating lower than the total power rating of the machine which makes it an attractive solution for applications where speed control over a limited operating range is required like in the case of wind turbines. It has two windings with different no. of poles. One of the windings called primary winding which is connected directly to the power grid, while the other winding called secondary winding is connected through a variable speed drive to grid and is used to control the output frequency [1]. The machine model proposed is an axial flux machine with dual stator topology. In this paper, axial flux brushless doubly fed reluctance machine (AF-BDFRM) is designed and analyzed and the initial FEA results are presented.