A Novel Double Stators Air-Core Pulsed Machine for Pulsed Power Supply Systems

Air-core pulsed alternator (APA) has an outstanding ability to drive electromagnetic railgun with huge pulse current, due to the extremely low internal impedance produced by its nonferromagnetic structure, and the pulsed power supply system based on this lightweight machine has been an attractive choice for electromagnetic railgun. The system’s level of miniaturization and integration has been an urgent problem, making its usage in applications such as mobile vehicles or shipboard platforms severely limited. Therefore, an optimal system’s topology is very necessary to investigate for reducing the size of the whole system, it is easy to find the prime mover, and the field initiation module containing a high-voltage pulse capacitor module, can be taken into consideration. In this article, a novel double stators air-core pulsed machine is proposed, which is a new topology for integrating an outer rotor air-core permanent magnet synchronous motor (ORAPMSM) into an APA, and it has outstanding advantages of not increasing the axial length of APA and with the ability to replace the demand of the field initiation capacitor. This novel machine can improve the system’s energy storage density and power density effectively. In this text, the basic structure of the machine is introduced first, and then, the operating principle of the power supply system is given and an analytical calculation relating to the operating mode is developed in detail, a brief electromagnetic design of the machine is carried out too. Finally, the finite element analysis is used to verify the feasibility of the system, and an optimization is developed to improve the performance of the operating process.