A Non-Permanent Magnet DC-Biased Vernier Reluctance Linear Machine with Non-Uniform Air Gap Structure for Ripple Reduction

Thrust ripple and density greatly impact the performance of the linear machine and other linear actuators, causing positioning control precision, dynamic performance, and efficiency issues. Generalized pole-pair combinations are difficult to satisfy both the thrust and ripple for double salient reluctance linear machines. In this paper, a DC-Biased vernier reluctance linear machine (DCB-VRLM) is proposed to solve the abovementioned issues. The key to the proposed design is to reduce the ripple and enhance the thrust density with non-uniform teeth by utilizing and optimizing the modulated flux in the air gap. To effectively verify the proposed design, the DCB-VRLMs with different winding pole pairs and secondary poles are compared. The 12-slot/10-pole combination is chosen to adopt a non-uniform air gap structure. Moreover, the energy distribution of AC/DC winding is studied and optimized to further enhance the performance of the proposed DCB-VRLM. The results indicate that the DCB-VRLM with the non-uniform air gap has a lower thrust ripple, better overload capability, and higher thrust density, which confirms its superiority in long-stroke linear rail transit and vertical elevator applications.