High Speed Permanent Magnet Machine Design for Optimum Volumetric Power Density

High speed permanent magnet machines show growing interests in the research domain since they offer power density improvement in many applications. The main drawbacks are the expensive heavy rare earth magnets and the elevated iron loss at high speed operation with conventional steel. This paper explores a machine design option which adapts low dysprosium magnets and low loss density Supercore steel materials, in order to reduce the magnet cost while providing high power density and efficiency at high speed operation. Both concentrated and distributed winding designs are considered and their major characteristics, features, and performance are compared against each other, leading to a conclusion that the concentrated winding design is more volumetric power dense compared to the distributed winding design, and thus it is more suitable for high speed applications.