This paper aims to deal with the issue of how to rapidly calculate the optimal diameter and length of the magnet-iron magnetic modulated ring (MMR) of homopolar inductor alternator (HIA) used for flywheel energy storage system.
In this paper, the authors propose a magnetic-circuit model for calculating the optimal diameter and length of the magnet-iron MMR. The accuracy of the magnetic-circuit model is verified through FEM simulations.
The research results show that the proposed magnetic-circuit model is highly accurate in calculating the optimal diameter and length of the magnet-iron MMR when the MMR iron is not saturated. The optimization of the mass of the magnet-iron MMR using the magnetic-circuit model and FEM is also studied. The research results indicate that the optimal length of the magnet-iron MMR should be as small as possible, provided that the MMR iron is not oversaturated.
The optimization results based on the magnetic-circuit model exhibit very small errors, and the model offers significant advantages over FEM in terms of computational costs.
