Alternative Surface-Mounted Permanent Magnet Topology for Reducing Voltage and Torque Harmonics in Shaft Generators

Traditional diesel generators on a merchant ship, composed of a wound rotor synchronous generator and a four-stroke diesel engine, supply electrical power for various loads. Recently, shaft generators for merchant ships have been increasingly replacing diesel generators to reduce CO 2 emissions through fuel efficiency improvement. In particular, permanent magnet synchronous generators have replaced induction generators due to their high-efficiency characteristics at light loads. The surface-mounted permanent magnet rotor can be a suitable topology owing to the relatively short constant power range. This generator can also operate as a motor according to the propulsion mode, so minimizing the harmonics of the induced voltage with the torque pulsation being essential. This paper proposes an alternative surface permanent magnet topology. Three magnets comprise one pole, with one bread-loaf magnet and two rectangular magnets. It helps to simplify the magnetization and assembly of the rotor because of the flat bottom shape of the magnet. Due to the low remanence of two rectangular magnets at the pole edge, this rotor structure effectively makes the air-gap magnetic flux density sinusoidal with production costs reduced. The step-skew suppresses higher-order harmonics. The total harmonic distortion comparison of the two-dimensional finite element analysis and the no-load test result shows under 6% difference from the interior permanent magnet prototype machine. A comparison of harmonic characteristics with other rotors shows that the proposed modular pole has sufficient competitiveness compared to the tapered bread-loaf type. It can be applied as a substitute for the tapered bread-loaf magnet in direct-drive ship propulsion systems and is expected to shorten the manufacturing process and time.