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A typical flywheel energy storage system (FESS) includes an electrical machine, a flywheel, and magnetic bearings, which are independent of each other. Therefore, the structure of FESS is complicated, which leads to the problems of high cost and low integration. This article presents a novel stator PM excitation solid rotor machine (SPE-SRM) for FESS, which integrates an electrical machine, flywheels, and a magnetic bearing. The design method of the SPE-SRM is presented specifically. First, the structure and operation principle of the SPE-SRM are illustrated. Second, the design and optimization of the flywheel-rotor are presented with considering of power, energy storage, and mechanical strength. Third, the magnetic equivalent circuit of the SPE-SRM is established to simplify the design. Besides, the armature reaction and leakage flux factor are investigated. Fourth, the performance indexes, including torque, suspension force, no-load back electromotive force (back-EMF), losses, and temperature rise are fully analyzed by the finite element analysis. Finally, a 22 kW prototype is manufactured and tested. The rationality of the concept and design is validated by experiments. The SPE-SRM has the merits of high integration, robust structure, and low cost, so it has the potential for wide application in FESS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homopolar inductor machine (HIM) has caught much attention in the field of flywheel energy storage system (FESS) due to its merits of robust rotor, brushless exciting, and high reliability. Compared with permanent magnet HIM (PM-HIM), the HIM with field winding (FW-HIM) can effectively eliminate the idling loss caused by the no-load magnetic field by cutting off the excitation current, while the charge/discharge efficiency of the HIM would be decreased due to the copper loss of field winding. To address this contradiction, a novel PM-HIM with a mechanical flux modulator (MFM-HIM) is proposed to achieve low idling loss and high charge/discharge efficiency. First, the special structure and operation principle of the MFM-HIM are investigated. Afterwards, the characteristic of the equivalent magnetic circuit of the MFM-HIM is analyzed and the key structure parameters of it are derived and optimized. Moreover, the electromagnetic performance indexes of the MFM-HIM, including back electromotive force, flux weakening ability, losses, etc. are fully analyzed. Finally, a prototype of the MFM-HIM is designed, manufactured, and tested. Experiment results confirm those obtained by simulations. Results show that the proposed MFM-HIM inherits the merits of high charge/discharge efficiency of PM-HIM and almost no idling electromagnetic loss of FW-HIM. The MFM-HIM could be a promising candidate for the application of FESS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urban rail transit system has the characteristics of wide voltage fluctuation, intermittent and strong impact load, limited heat dissipation capacity. The high-speed flywheel energy storage system (FESS) is used to provide network voltage stability and regenerative braking energy recovery due to its high power density, unlimited number of charge-discharge cycles, fast response and environmental friendliness. When considering the design of high-speed FESS converter with 3.6 kHz fundamental frequency and 330 kW rated power used in 1500 VDC urban rail transit system, the two-stage topological converter reduces the efficiency and increase the cost and size, meanwhile, the series-connected converters and the multilevel converter increase the difficulties of control and insulation, so the two-level and I-type three-level converters of high-speed FESS are designed and evaluated. Several comparisons are made by detailed experimental data from the perspective of the traction load characteristics of the 1500 VDC urban rail transit system and the technical and economical requirements of the high-speed FESS. It is found that the three-level converter has significant advantages in matching the traction load characteristics for its higher duty cycle capability, as well as improving the technical and economical performances such as efficiency, du/dt value, THD, voltage stability, and reducing the cost by 40% when compared to the two-level converter. While in the future MW class high-speed FESS development, the maximum output power capacity of the three-level FESS is relatively lower than that of the two-level FESS. The theoretical analyses were verified by experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homopolar inductor machine (HIM) has been applied in the field of flywheel energy storage system (FESS) due to its merits of simple structure, high reliability, and low idling losses. However, the HIM features unipolar air-gap flux density, which makes its power density lower than that of the electrical machine with bipolar air-gap flux density. Addressing this issue, a novel outer rotor homopolar inductor machine (OR-HIM) is proposed in this article. First, the special structure and operation principle of the OR-HIM are illustrated. Then, the unit motors of the OR-HIM are obtained and investigated based on the magnetic equivalent circuit method to facilitate the design. Moreover, the performance indexes, including power density, output characteristics, losses, and rotor stress of the OR-HIM, are fully analyzed. Finally, a 13-kW prototype is designed, manufactured, and tested. The back electromotive force, load voltage, output torque, and efficiency are measured and compared with those obtained by the finite element analysis. The results indicate that the proposed OR-HIM is a promising candidate for the application of FESS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The homopolar inductor machine (HIM) has attracted recent interest in the field of flywheel energy storage system due to its merits of robust rotor and low idling losses. In some situations, the analytical methods of a conventional wound-field synchronous machine (WSM) can be used to analyze the HIM, but the clear explanation about why these can be done and the relationship between HIM and WSM were not given in the literature. To address these issues, this paper studies the HIM based on the basic theoretical model and equations. First, the structure and magnetic circuit characteristics of HIM are introduced. Second, the mathematical model of HIM is derived and then decomposed, which indicates that the HIM can be seen as a WSM with large end leakage inductance when rotor tooth width $ {\theta _t} \leq \pi /p$ , or a combination of WSM and synchronous reluctance machine (SynRM) when ${\theta _t} > \pi /p$. Third, the performance indexes of HIM and corresponding equivalent machines, including air gap flux density, back electromotive force, and inductance parameters, are analyzed and fully compared. Finally, an HIM is prototyped and tested on an experimental platform. The simulation and experiment results show that it is reasonable to regard the HIM as a WSM or a combination of WSM and SynRM. The conclusion gives a transparent explanation about the relationship between HIM and WSM, which helps to simplify the analysis of the HIM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homopolar inductor machine (HIM) has a wide range of applications in the field of flywheel energy storage system and ship propulsion due to its merits of simple structure, brushless exciting, and low idling losses. However, the three-dimensional finite element method (3-D FEM) is mainly used to investigate the electromagnetic performance indexes of HIM due to its intrinsic 3-D flux density distribution, which is time-consuming. To facilitate the analysis of HIM, an analytical method (AM) is necessary, especially in the initial design stage. Hence, this article presents an AM for analyzing the electromagnetic performance of HIM. First, the structure and operation principle of HIM are illustrated. Second, the magnetic equivalent circuit of HIM is built considering the saturation of stator and rotor core. Third, the air-gap permeance function is obtained considering the affection of stator and rotor slots. Finally, the magnetomotive force, air-gap flux density, back electromotive force, inductances and electromagnetic torque of HIM are calculated, then validated by 3-D FEM and corresponding experiments. The results indicate that the proposed AM can provide reasonable results to estimate the electromagnetic performance of HIM, which would be helpful for the analysis of HIM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The homopolar inductor machine (HIM) is of particular interest in the field of flywheel energy storage system, where it has the potential to significantly reduce self-discharge associated with magnetic losses. However, the conventional HIM suffers from low power and torque density due to its unipolar air-gap flux density. Besides, the air-gap flux density of HIM is limited by the cross section of rotor, and the rotor diameter is limited by the maximum tip speed of the rotor. Thus, the maximum effective length and diameter of rotor should be within a certain range, which constrains the output power and stored energy of the HIM. To solve these problems, a novel multi-unit out-rotor HIM (MO-HIM) with bipolar air-gap flux density is proposed in this paper. First, the structure and operating principle of MO-HIM is illustrated. Then, the characteristics of the proposed machine are analyzed, indicating that MO-HIM can be regarded as a superposition of multiple unit machines. Finally, to verify the superior performances of the proposed MO-HIM, it is compared with a unipolar out-rotor HIM with multi-segment stator cores in terms of air-gap flux density, back electromotive force, and output torque. Results show that the proposed MO-HIM has larger fundamental air-gap flux density, higher power, and torque density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, one novel heteropolar radial hybrid magnetic bearing (HRHMB) with low-power loss is proposed for flywheel energy storage system. First, its structure and equivalent magnetic circuit (EMC) are introduced in detail. Then, some main design parameters are analyzed based on EMC, including air-gap bias flux density, magnetic pole area, permanent magnet (PM) dimensions, and control current. Furthermore, to improve the performances of the novel HRHMB, the optimizations are implemented both on its structure and some key size parameters, such as the second air-gap length, PM height, and width. Finally, the optimal scheme is verified by the 3-D finite-element analysis, which indicates the maximum control current can be reduced to only 40% that of initial design by the optimizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pulsed high-power supplies in this paper employs a homopolar inductor alternator (HIA) as the motor/generator integrated energy storage pulsed alternator. Lumped parameter design equations are developed, which is used to establish the mathematical model of the HIA, and the analytic calculation method of inductance matrix is derived. Prototype flywheel energy storage was built, and the basic structure of HIA is analyzed by using finite-element method (FEM). This paper proposes a simplified equivalent 2-D salient-pole synchronous generator model to simplify the 3-D FEM of HIA and investigates the motor control method of HIA based on the simplified 2-D equivalent model. The experiments were conducted for speed up to 8000 rpm and the six-step inverter drive strategy presented in this paper achieves the motor/generator integrated control on inductor energy storage pulsed alternator (IESPA). Most experimental results were in line with designed value. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An air-core pulsed alternator is extremely attractive for driving the electromagnetic launchers. The reason is that the machine can offer high voltage and current performance in a single-element energy storage device, a smooth pulse profile, and naturally cycled current zeros, which can allow for extremely low muzzle currents and simplifies switching requirements. But because of the short history of the air-core pulsed alternator in China, the relevant theoretical research is not enough and the experience in fabrication is absent. It is really necessary to summarize a preliminary design method in order to rapidly determine the size and approximately evaluate the electrical performance of the machine. The optimization will be based on this first-stage design scheme. In this paper, based on the requirements of the railgun, some important design considerations of a seven-phase and six-pole air-core pulsed alternator are presented in detail. In addition, it is significant to obtain the analytical formulas for the first-stage design requiring less costs; these formulas intuitively allow us to expedite the design process and optimize the design scheme. Finally, some basic output parameters of the machine are given for the preliminary design; the designed pulsed alternator will generate 1.4 kV and drive a train of 1-MA pulses into a 5-m railgun, accelerating 200-g masses at 2 km/s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents the investigation of a novel capacitor-charging power supply through inertial energy storage of a homopolar inductor alternator (HIA). The structure of a new 18/16-pole HIA is proposed, and we introduce the theory and advantages of HIA. The characteristics of the static magnetic field distributions are calculated by finite-element analysis, and a basic mathematic model of HIA is set up. We propose an efficient and stable capacitor-charging circuit topology to meet the requirements of this system. A functional model of the key device, namely, IGCT, is also established. Finally, we verify its feasibility and advantages through analysis of the system simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]