C. Barz et al.

/ Carpathian Journal of Electronic and Computer Engineering 5 (2012) 9-12 9

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Numerical modeling of claw-poles alternator

C. BARZ*, C. OPREA * and F. DRAGAN**
*Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, North University Center from Baia Mare,
Department of Electrical Engineering, Baia Mare, Romania,
[email protected], [email protected]
** University of Oradea, Department of Pharmacy, Oradea, Romania, [email protected]

Abstract—The paper present a program of modeling of a turns and achievable alternator output power. However,
claw-poles alternator with the program Magnet 6.11, which realizing these advantages requires a new field excitation
after the input data of machine realize the geometrical circuit that can deliver high field current at a low voltage,
model for numerical analyzes. After analysis, the program without exceeding the limited current ratings of alternator
can be changed automatically and made a new model, that
brushes. [1]
can be analyzed automatically and not being necessarily
construction the model with the drawing program each time Some studies are based on the idea of increasing the
its necessary. power out and efficiency of the alternator, while
maintaining the alternator operating point in the optimum
zone and succeed to increases the output power to 200%
I. INTRODUCTION and significant improvement of efficiency which is
The claw pole alternator is the most common power demonstrated at high speeds. [2]
generation device used in cars and are mostly designed to Analytical models allow preliminary design studies,
low costs. Even though the principle of electrical so the numerical simulations are an opportunity to
machines has been used for more than a century, their validate and refine solutions based on analytical methods
design is still subject to improvements nowadays. which has focused on the speed of calculation models.
Production of electricity on board of classic automobile Schulte describes two approaches for calculating the
and hybrid car's is carried out with the help alternators mutual inductance between rotor and stator of the
with claw poles. synchronous alternator with claw-poles about the claw
Due to increasing demand of the power requirement of shape. Results from the analytical determination of the
the vehicle, as well as appearance green vehicle (electric) mutual inductance, which requires an indirect
or the hybrid pursuing protecting the environment, determination, with utilization in circuit-based simulations
requiring a system crossing from 14V at the drive motor lead to currents matching measured currents very well.
42V, adding decreasing the international fuel resources, Appliance of a Fourier analysis on the determined
research alternators characteristics of great importance for
characteristic of the mutual inductance, contained
vehicle manufacturers and not only
harmonics are provided, to allow for analytic composition.
Use the claw pole construction has the advantage of Due to the complex structure of the rotor, the
simplicity and high reliability, but has the disadvantage of
assessment approaches are difficult. If the prototypes are
low efficiency caused by high leakage flux.
available, mutual inductance can be calculated from the
II. PARTICULARLY CONSTRUCTIVE voltage measured at no load. Description of the mutual
inductance obtained can be used to implement the circuit
The structure of the claw pole is typically homopolar based on numerical simulations. [3]
and can be seen in different types of machines. Both the
rotor and the stator can be built in this variant, which is
very simple, by using a single winding for all obtained
alternating poles exactly through the construction of claw-
shaped poles.
The type of homopolar flux produced by the excitation
current through the cylindrical coil of the rotor becomes,
thanks to the claw poles, a heteropolar flux type in the air
gap and induces electromotive voltages of almost
sinusoidal variation in the stator windings.
This construction with homopolar inductor type and
claw pole is simple, compact, but shows a significant
dispersion, which causes a low useful flux.
Figure 1. Angle of the claw poles
Other improves the alternator power density with the
use of a foil field winding to provide higher conductor Also, the studies of C. Stoica have led to the
packing factors and offer improved thermal transfer observation that the dispersion fluxes specific to a pole
properties in the claw-pole alternator. These advantages are decreases with the increase of the inclination angle ψ of
demonstrated to enable significant increases in field ampere

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the lateral surfaces of pole (Fig. 1.), and the useful flux The accuracy of the finite-element solution depends on
increases to the maximum value for ψ max = 720. three factors: the nature of the field, the size of the
By studying the influence of constructive parameter ψ elements, and the element order. In regions where the
on the useful flux, it was observed that increasing the direction or magnitude of the field is changing rapidly,
useful flux by optimizing the pole geometry resulted in a high accuracy requires small elements or a high element
decrease of the excitation current. Accordingly, a decrease order. In addition, the methods used to find the finite-
in the volume of active materials, iron and copper will element solution are iterative, with an adjustable error
follow, improving the power/weight ratio. criterion for terminating the process.
At this type of alternator the most important obstacle is Starting from the model of alternator with claw-poles in
determining the shape of the rotor poles. These poles have the experimental study, and checking in the same time the
an important role in closing the magnetic field lines geometric dimensions of its design, was performed three-
because they ensure the route from the rotor excitation dimensional model of the alternator to following the
towards the air gap and the correct dimensioning of the behavior of this. [5]
claw pole peak for limiting the dispersion fluxes.
3.1. Solver
Due to the high concentration of magnetic field lines
through the cross section of the poles, one must consider When non-linear magnetic materials are present, the
choosing the appropriate dimensions for avoiding the rotor permeability depends on the local value of B:
core saturation. [4] - Constant values of permeability are chosen for each
Complex construction of the alternator with claw poles, element, from the initial slope of the material B-H curve.
the existence of magnetic fields both radial and axial, the - The resulting linear equations are solved numerically
lack of symmetry plane-parallel magnetic field study for the magnetic potential, using the semi-iterative
require the machine to be achieved through three- conjugate gradient method.
dimensional finite element numerical modeling. - The flux density values are calculated from the
Methods using numerical simulations based on finite magnetic potential, and these results are used to calculate
elements are often used because they allow a better new values for the element permeability.
precision performance of the devices. Using these
methods can overcome all the surveys and the 3.2. Method of permeability calculation
assumptions made to establish an analytical model often For 3D problems, MagNet gives a choice of the
long and hard to build. [7] Newton-Raphson method or successive substitution or
calculating updated element permeability values. The
III. THE SOFT MAGNET 6.11 default Newton-Raphson method normally converges
Magnet is made as a 3D modeling tool for solving more rapidly, but there can be convergence problems with
some material characteristics, in which case the successive
problems of static magnetic fields and eddy-currents. The
substitution method is required. Only the Newton-
2D modeling, magnetic may also deal with problems in Raphson method is available for 2D problems.
which currents are induced by the motion of a system
part. 3.3. Newton steps
Finite elements method is a numerical method based At each step in the permeability calculation process, the
on the application of variation principles to solve change in the solution is monitored. The process continues
equations with partial derivatives. In technique, was first either until the change is less than the Newton Tolerance
developed to solve the problems of resistance material, its or until the limit of Maximum Newton Iterations is
application to calculate electric and magnetic fields are reached. For most problems, the default values of 1% and
relatively recent. 20 iterations should be satisfactory.
Finite element method is suitable for work with non-
linear components such as electromagnets with materials 3.4. Polynomial order
ferromagnetic who manifest anisotropic phenomenal that The solver polynomial order setting is a global value
and saturation. that applies throughout the model and use order 2 is
Methods of numerical analysis of fields in general and satisfactory in rotational geometry which gives a fast
in particular, the electromagnetic finite element method solution for medium accuracy of results.
are currently the most used, accurate, researched and For 3D models the polynomial order of elements in
developed continuously. Applicability domains complex particular components can be specified separately but for
with scratchy, slight imposition of conditions of the 2D models the solver polynomial order option sets the
border, the relatively simple mathematical problem, and value that will be used for the entire model.
equivalent required to do this method worldwide. The With some models, increasing the polynomial order is
professional analysis developed by companies like as effective as using adaption to improve the solution
“Vector Fields”, “Infolytica”, etc. ensure a competitive accuracy.
environment for the development of efficiency and
applicability of the method. 3.5. Adaption
The problem of solving is reduces to the solution of a Adaption is the process of automatic refinement of
set of linear equations for the unknown potentials at all the mesh to improve the solution accuracy.
the nodes. This must be repeated several times if the For 3D models there is a choice of two adaption
model contains non-linear magnetic materials. [8] methods: h-type adaption, where element sizes are halved,

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and p-type adaption, where the element polynomial order alternator with claws to be done from different materials,
is increased. so the stator but also the rotor.
After each adaption step, the change in the calculated Magnet 6.11 has a library of predefined materials
value of stored magnetic energy is monitored. Adaption (Fig. 3) what can be selected for construction of
continues until this change is less than a specified components of the geometric model, but also can be
tolerance, or the specified number of steps has been introduce the new materials base on the dependence B = f
reached. If the quantity of interest is the force or torque, (H).
rather than an energy-related quantity such as inductance, Depending on the outside and the inside diameter of the
a more accurate solution may be required, and the change stator, the shape and dimensions of the windings is made
in the stored magnetic energy may not be a good indicator. the geometrical construction of the stator follow the
In such cases it is often advantageous to set the tolerance winding stator construction and the definition of electric
to a very low (but non-zero) value, and control the mesh parameters of the stator. (Fig. 4.)
refinement by adjusting the maximum number of adaption
steps. The optimum setting can be determined by
changing the number of steps and monitoring the change
in the force or torque value.

IV. THE NUMERICAL MODEL

With the programming language VB Script was made
the interface for data input (Fig. 2.), for building the
design model of claw pole alternator, in function of
electrical characteristics imposed.

Figure 4. The geometrical construction of the stator

After achieving the stator, the rotor is built following

the same principles (Fig. 5, Fig. 6)

Figure 2. The inputs date

The inputs date are taken and used to construct 3D

model of alternator. During the program choose the
materials used for body building stator, rotor and winding
them.
The program realize after model construction, the
software analysis of the magnetic field with finite element
and result the problems zone which need optimized.

Figure 5. The geometrical construction of the rotor

Figure 3. The library of predefined materials

We tried to implement to the program, some facilitate

which made to choose for building the geometric model of Figure 6. The geometrical construction of the excitation winding

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In the program can change the size of rotor teeth which V. CONCLUSIONS
leads to default and changing the dimensions of air gap. The programs which realized field analysis based on the
finite element method, come in help of the designer from
the checks who can be made in usually time and with high
precise, thus removing any errors made during in the
design of electric machines, providing reached the
designer intended purpose. These programs of analysis
and verification ensure the safety of a proper design of the
electric cars.
The dates obtained for various operating conditions
imposed and verified from the experimental data will be
used as reference data for future comparisons of
prototypes under study work.
It aimed at establishing the optimal levels of saturation
in different parts of the magnetic circuit (teeth, yokes),
considering that the saturation level properly prescribed
Figure 7. The saving model and produced has a beneficial effect under the aspect of
control and minimize the effect of armature reaction on
The program allows saving the models (Fig. 7) and the main magnetic field.
retrieving of this for further modifications to the building Numerical investigations carried out aimed at
with new data, which are made by environmental Magnet optimizing the machine design by reducing the magnetic
6.11 Accessing computing environment for the analysis saturation of the poles’ alternator into the construction of
magnet field define boundary conditions, the currents that the rotor.
cross both the stator and rotor windings.
Magnet computing environment allows the choice of
several ways of calculating the field, find the most used REFERENCES
Newton Raphson method, and also choose the orders of
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