3-DIMENSIONAL FINITE-ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF PERMANENT-MAGNET BRUSHLESS DC MOTOR-DRIVES - STATUS OF THE STATE-OF-THE-ART

This paper reviews recent advances in the state of the art of applying three-dimensional finite-element (3-D-FE) magnetic field computation techniques to the analysis and quantification of parameters and perfor mance of permanent magnet (PM) brushless de motors as components of br ushless de drives. The application of the powerful 3-D-FE formulation based on the coupled magnetic vector potential-magnetic scalar potenti al (CMVP-MSP) concept to a case study PM brushless de motor with skewe d permanent magnet mounts is reviewed and summarized. This large-scale simulation of such a motor drive system is shown here to be successfu lly implementable using workstation type computer environments.