Rapid Electromagnetic Analysis and Design using Flux Tubes

A reduced order numerical computational method based on flux tube modelling is proposed for the rapid electromagnetic analysis and design of electromechanical energy transducers using an example of a synchronous reluctance machine. The flux tube method is applied to establish flux linkage functions facilitating fast and accurate inductance estimation. The practical advantage is that the approach does not require precalculation of the air gap flux functions using computationally expensive methods such as finite elements. Initial results indicate that the method can predict, reliably and accurately, the flux distribution in the magnetic circuit, thus ultimately enabling efficient estimation of the inductance, and is suitable for rotational and translational synchronous reluctance machines.