IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 44, NO.

11, NOVEMBER 2008

4349

A Novel Pseudo Direct-Drive Brushless Permanent Magnet Machine

Kais Atallah1 , Jan Rens2 , Smail Mezani3 , and David Howe1
Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S1 3JD, U.K.
Magnomatics Ltd, The Sheffield Bioincubator, Sheffield S3 7RD, U.K.
GREEN-UHP, Facult des Sciences, 54506 Vandoeuvre ls Nancy, France
For low-speed electrical machine applications, it is usually weight/size and cost effective to employ a high-speed machine together with
a mechanical gearbox. However, the disadvantages associated with magnetic gearboxes can be overcome by mechanically and magnetically integrating a magnetic gear and a permanent magnet brushless machine, to create a pseudo direct-drive machine. It is shown
that a torque density in excess of 60 kNm/m3 can then be achieved, at a power factor in excess of 0.9.
Index TermsElectric machines, magnetic gears, permanent magnet.

I. INTRODUCTION
OR LOW-SPEED electrical machine applications, it
is usually weight/size and cost effective to employ a
high-speed machine together with a mechanical gearbox.
However, in many instances, the disadvantages associated
with mechanical gearboxes, such as acoustic noise and
mechanical vibration, the need for lubrication, concerns
regarding reliability and maintenance requirements, make
direct-drive solutions more functionally and/or economically
attractive. Liquid-cooled permanent magnet (PM) brushless
machines exhibit relatively high torque densities, typically
30 kNm/m for radial-field and
50 kNm/m for
being
transverse-field topologies, respectively [1][3]. However,
although transverse-field machines exhibit the highest torque
density, since their power factor is very low [4], typically
ranging from 0.3 to 0.5, the required inverter/converter VA
rating is a factor of 2 3 times higher than that for an equivalent
conventional brushless machine. This results in a significant
cost penalty, which is limiting the take-up of transverse-field
machine technology.
Recent advances in magnetic gears have led to their torque
transmission capability becoming competitive to that of mechanical gears, whilst they offer significant operational advantages [5]. Further, there are various ways in which a magnetic
gear may be combined with an electrical machine to realize a
high torque density pseudo direct-drive. Irrespective of the
machine technology, the simplest method is simply to mechanically couple the output shaft of the machine to the input shaft of
the magnetic gear, as illustrated in Fig. 1, or to incorporate the
electrical machine within the bore of a magnetic gear [6].
This paper describes a radically different approach to creating
a pseudo direct-drive machine by combining a magnetic gear
and electrical machine both mechanically and magnetically [7].
It will be shown that a torque density in excess of 60 kNm/m
can then be achieved from an air-cooled machine, while the
power factor can be larger than 0.9.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMAG.2008.2001509

Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.

Fig. 1. Mechanically coupled magnetic gear and electrical machine.

II. PSEUDO DIRECT-DRIVE PERMANENT MAGNET

BRUSHLESS MACHINE
A. Principle of Operation
Fig. 2 shows a schematic of the proposed magnetically and
mechanically coupled magnetic gear and permanent magnet
brushless machine, while Fig. 3 shows the radial flux density
pole-pair high-speed permanent
waveform due to the
magnet rotor in the airgap adjacent to the stationary permanent
magnets, both with and without the ferromagnetic pole-pieces.
Fig. 4 shows the associated harmonic spectra. It can be seen that
ferromagnetic pole-pieces rethe introduction of the
sults in a dominant 21 pole-pair asynchronous space harmonic
pole-pair stationary
field which interacts with the
permanent magnets to transmit torque from the high-speed
rotor to the low-speed rotor, the magnetic gear ratio being
, and vice versa, while the 2 pole-pair
fundamental component interacts with the stator winding to
produce electromagnetic torque.
Similarly, Fig. 5 shows the radial flux density waveform due
to the stationary permanent magnets in the airgap adjacent to
the high-speed rotor permanent magnets, both with and without
the ferromagnetic pole-pieces, while Fig. 6 shows the associated harmonic spectra. It can be seen that the introduction of

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 44, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2008

Fig. 4. Harmonic spectra of radial flux density waveforms due to permanent

magnets on high-speed rotor in airgap adjacent to stationary permanent magnets.

Fig. 2. Magnetically and mechanically coupled magnetic gear and permanent

magnet brushless machine or pseudo direct-drive machine. (Active diameter:
178 mm; active length: 75 mm). (a) Radial cross-section. (b) Axial cross-section.

Fig. 5. Radial flux density waveforms due to stationary permanent magnets in

airgap adjacent to permanent magnets of high-speed rotor.

Fig. 3. Radial flux density waveforms due to permanent magnets on high-speed

rotor in airgap adjacent to stationary permanent magnets.

Fig. 6. Harmonic spectra of radial flux density waveforms due to stationary permanent magnets in airgap adjacent to permanent magnets of high-speed rotor.

the ferromagnetic pole-pieces now results in a 2 pole-pair asynchronous field harmonic which interacts with the 2 pole-pairs
high-speed rotor.

and the stator winding is similar to that of a conventional surface-mounted permanent magnet machine, and is given by
(1)

B. Electromagnetic Torque
In the brushless ac mode of operation, the electromagnetic
torque which results from the interaction of the high-speed rotor

where
is the stator bore diameter,
is the peak fundamental
airgap flux density, is the active length of the machine,

ATALLAH et al.: A NOVEL PSEUDO DIRECT-DRIVE BRUSHLESS PERMANENT MAGNET MACHINE

4351

Fig. 7. Variation of output torque with angular rotor position.

is the rms electric loading, and

is the winding factor. Since
the output torque, , of the low-speed rotor is given by
(2)
then, from (1) and (2)
(3)
From (3), it can be seen that the effective peak fundamental
airgap flux density is now
, and for the pseudo direct-drive machine shown in Fig. 2, this is equivalent to 6.4 T,
which is more than 5 times the remanence of the NdFeB permanent magnets which are used, for which the remanence
1.25 T and the recoil permeability
.

Fig. 8. Variation of output speed with time.

where is the electromagnetic torque, resulting from the interaction of the stator winding and the rotor, is the load torque,
is the angular position of the load, and
is the combined
inertia of the rotor and the load.
For the pseudo direct-drive machine shown in Fig. 2, since
the torque is transmitted magnetically from the high-speed rotor
to the output rotor (low-speed), the equations which govern the
motion of the high-speed and low-speed rotors are
(5)
and
(6)

C. Cogging Torque
The cogging torque which manifests itself as torque ripple
on the output rotor results from interactions between the ferromagnetic pole-pieces and both the high-speed rotor permanent
magnets and the stationary permanent magnets. Qualitatively,
the cogging torque is determined by the cogging torque factor
, which has been shown to be applicable to mag[8],
is the smallest common multiple benetic gears [5], where
tween the number of poles
(
or
) and the number of
ferromagnetic pole-pieces .
,
For the pseudo direct-drive shown in Fig. 2,
,
, and the cogging torque factor is 1. Hence, the
cogging torque is inherently small. Fig. 7 shows the variation
of the output torque with the angular rotor position when the
machine is on full-load. It can be seen that the torque ripple is
less than 0.7% of the rated full load torque.
D. Electromechanical Modeling
For a conventional permanent magnet brushless machine, the
motion of the rotor is governed by
(4)

is the angular position of the high-speed rotor,

where
is the maximum torque which can be produced by the magnetic
is the inertia of the high-speed rotor.
gear, and
Fig. 8 compares the speed of a load having a total inertia
when driven by the pseudo direct-drive machine shown in
Fig. 2 with that when driven by a conventional brushless machine having a similar torque rating. For both machines, the
electromagnetic torque exhibits a ripple of 140% peak-peak,
and the load torque has viscous, windage and constant components which are equal at the load speed of 25 rad/s. It can
be seen that, in contrast to the conventional machine, the influence of the electromagnetic torque ripple in the pseudo direct-drive machine, is almost totally filtered out, and is not transmitted to the load. It is also worth noting that a torque ripple
of 140% peak-peak will correspond to the torque ripple caused
by a short-circuited phase in a 3-phase fault-tolerant machine.
Therefore, since a pseudo direct-drive machine can also be designed to be fault-tolerant, the influence of a phase open-circuit
or a phase short-circuit on the torque ripple seen by the load will
not be significant, and torque ripple minimization techniques [9]
which may be required for conventional fault-tolerant machines,
may not be necessary for a pseudo direct-drive fault-tolerant
machine.

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 44, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2008

be in excess of 0.9 (which is significantly higher than could be

achieved with transverse-field machines). Thus, the volumetric
torque density of a naturally air-cooled pseudo direct-drive machine is comparable with, or even higher, than that of a transverse-field machine, while the volt-ampere rating of the power
electronic converter is almost identical to that for a similarly
rated conventional permanent magnet brushless machine.
IV. CONCLUSION

Fig. 9. Pseudo direct-drive machine on test-bed.

A novel method of coupling a magnetic gear and a permanent magnet brushless machine, both mechanically and magnetically, to realize a pseudo direct-drive machine has been
presented. It has been shown that a torque density in excess of
60 kNm/m can be achieved from a naturally air-cooled machine, at a power factor of 0.9 or higher.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the U.K. Engineering and
Physical Science Research Council, EPSRC, under Grant
GR/S70685.
REFERENCES

Fig. 10. Variation of low-speed torque with average rms stator current density.

III. DEMONSTRATOR PSEUDO DIRECT-DRIVE BRUSHLESS

PERMANENT MAGNET MACHINE
The pseudo direct-drive brushless permanent magnet machine shown in Fig. 2 has been prototyped and tested. Fig. 9
shows the machine on the test-bed, while Fig. 10 compares the
variation of the predicted geared electromagnetic output torque
(at 20 C) and the measured output torque with the average rms
current density in the stator slots. It can be seen that due to friction in the bearings, windage and temperature rise of the permanent magnets, the output torque is about 5% lower than the predicted electromagnetic torque. It can also be seen that a torque
density in excess of 60 kNm/m can be achieved with an average current density which is less than 2 Arms/mm (which is
significantly lower than the current density which conventional
machine designs would employ), while the power factor can

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Manuscript received February 27, 2008. Current version published December

17, 2008. Corresponding author: K. Atallah (e-mail: k.atallah@sheffield.ac.uk).