Design of an Electric Commutated Frog-Leg Winding Permanent-Magnet DC Machine

An electric commutated frog-leg winding permanent-magnet (PM) DC machine is proposed in this paper. It has a semi-closed slotted stator with a classical type of mesh winding introduced from the conventional brushed DC machine and a polyphase electric commutation besides a PM excitation rotor and a circular arrayed Hall position sensor. Under the cooperation between the position sensor and the electric commutation, the proposed machine is basically operated on the same principle of the brushed one. Because of its simplex frog-leg winding, the combination between poles and slots is designed as 4/22, and the number of phases is set as 11. By applying an exact analytical method, which is verified comparable with the finite element analyses (FEA), to the prediction of its instantaneous magnetic field, electromotive force (EMF), cogging torque and output torque, it is well designed with a series of parameters in dimension aiming at the lowest cogging torque. A 230 W, 4-pole, and 22-slot new machine is prototyped and tested to verify the analysis. Copyright © 2014 IFSA Publishing, S. L.