Design Optimization of Outer Rotor Toothed Doubly Salient Permanent Magnet Generator Using Symbiotic Organisms Search Algorithm

Abstract

Wind turbine (WT) technology becomes more and more important due to the serious environmental and energy issues. The toothed poles outer rotor doubly salient permanent magnet (DSPM) generator with simple and durable design, high torque and high-power density has a great prospect in wind turbines application. The large diameter makes the construction of such a machine more convenient due to the installation of the turbine blades directly to the outer rotor generator surface. Nevertheless, the size of the generator must be increased to provide larger output power. This increases the generator’s mass. Thus, larger massive DSPM generators are undesirable in wind turbine design. In this paper, an optimization design procedure of the outer rotor doubly salient permanent magnet generator ORDSPMG is proposed for 10 kW WT application. The reduction of the generator weight is demonstrated and proofed. The considered machine version is characterized by having the same effective axial length and output torque imposed by the specifications relative to the 10 kW direct drive WT. An optimization procedure using a fast and effective method, namely the symbiotic organism search (SOS) algorithm coupled to a parametric two dimensional finite elements analysis (2D-FEA), is employed to optimize the machine parameters. The main parameters affecting the generator design are also analyzed. The results obtained reveal that the proposed generator topology presents low weight and thus high torque density among other satisfactory characteristics.