Quantitive Harmonic Analysis and Force Ripple Suppression of a Parallel Complementary Modular Linear Reluctance Machine

Considering the fluctuating price of permanent magnet, magnetless machine is a new trend in development. Variable reluctance linear machines (VRLM) with simple structure, good robustness, and high dynamic performance, is one of the potential candidates for linear direct-drive wave energy conversion (WEC) application replacing PM-excited linear machine. To ameliorate the fault-tolerance performance of VRLM, the researchers have come up with modular or segmented design, denoted as modular variable reluctance linear machines (MVRLM) However, suffering from large thrust ripple, the design of MVRLM still needs to be improved. To relieve the force ripple of MVRLM, a novel H-shaped modular variable-flux linear reluctance machine (HMVF-LRM) is proposed in this paper. The principle of force ripple suppression by using parallel-complementary structure is analyzed deeply. In this paper, the analytical calculation of induced voltage is developed quantitively with equivalent magnetic circuit method (EMC) and harmonics analysis. Then the design mechanism of HMVF-LRM is illustrated. Further, the performance and fault-tolerant capability of the proposed machine are simulated and evaluated by finite element analysis (FEA), and the prototype is tested to verify the effectiveness of the machine design.