Incorporating Skew in a Magnetic Equivalent Circuit Model of Synchronous Machines

Abstract

In this letter, a multislice method has been extended to model skew in a magnetic equivalent circuit for wound rotor synchronous machines. Within the model, the machine is divided into a user-defined number of slices along its axial direction. A system of equations is derived in which the magnetic equivalent circuit (MEC) loop flux and the axial currents in each slice are unknowns. A constraint is used to enforce that the axial currents across all slices are equal. The method overcomes challenges of alternative approaches used to model skew in MECs that have been documented by the community. Hardware experiments are used to validate the approach.