PULSED MULTI-ROTOR CONSTANT AIR GAP SWITCHED RELUCTANCE MOTOR

• US 20110074232A1
• Filed: 06/04/2009
• Published: 03/31/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 06/04/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Convergent Power, Inc.
• Original Assignee: Convergent Power, Inc.
• Inventors: Murray, James F.
• Granted Patent: US 8,373,328 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 310/46
• CPC Class Codes: H02K 19/06 Motors having windings on the stator and a variable-reluctance soft-iron rotor without windings, e.g. inductor motors

Abstract

An electric motor with two or more stator sections, each possessing at least two salient pole projections having power windings, and two or more armature sections on a common shaft. The armature sections are at an angle to each other: e.g. 90 degrees for two armatures, 120 degrees for three armatures. Each armature has a lamination stack or ferrite core. The armature sections form a constant air gap with the field poles, and have an elliptical profile with respect to the output shaft. The armature sections have no electrical windings, or conductors and require no slip rings, rotor coils or permanent magnets. The power windings are energized by pulses of electric current. Said pulses are automatically supplied to the salient pole nearest the longest rotor flux path available, as determined by a shaft position sensor.

Claims

1. An electric motor, comprising:

a plurality of motor segments, each segment comprising;

a stator, having stator poles and stator windings and

a rotor having a flux path element, said flux path element being attached to a rotor shaft at an oblique angle to the longitudinal axis of said shaft and having a shape that provides a uniform air gap with said stator poles when said shaft is rotated;

wherein said rotor shafts of said motor segments are mechanically coupled to each other.

2. The electric motor of claim 1, wherein said flux path elements comprise a ferrous lamination stack or a solid ferrite plate.

3. The electric motor of claim 1, further comprising a shaft angle sensor and a motor controller, said motor controller receiving a shaft angle from said sensor and supplying current pulses to said stator windings according to said shaft angle.

4. The electric motor of claim 1, wherein said stator poles are positioned in pole pairs with said rotor and rotor shaft between them and forming isolated stator magnetic field circuits when said stator windings are supplied with electrical current, such that a magnetic field is established having a single magnetic polarity in each of said poles of said pole pairs, with said each pole of said pole pairs having opposite magnetic polarity.

5. The electric motor of claim 1, wherein

said rotor flux plate elements have a shape defined by the volume contained between two parallel cuts taken through a right circular cylinder at an angle other than 90 degrees with respect to the axis of symmetry of said cylinder, each flux plate element having a front and back faces that are substantially elliptical, having major axes.

6. The electric motor of claim 5, wherein said angle with respect to the axis of symmetry is substantially 45 degrees.

7. The electric motor of claim 1, further comprising rotor counterweights.

8. The electric motor of claim 1, further comprising starter windings adapted to start the motor in a desired rotational direction.

9. The electric motor of claim 5, wherein said rotors are attached to a common shaft and said rotor flux path elements are arranged on said common shaft such that the major axes of said flux path elements are equally spaced on the shaft and wherein said stator poles are in the same position with respect to the common shaft for each motor segment.

10. The electric motor of claim 9, having two motor segments and two rotor flux path elements, said rotor flux path element being arranged on said common shaft such that their major axes are spaced 90 degrees apart.

11. The motor of claim 1, where in fly-back current is generated in the windings from collapsing fields and said fly-back current is captured and used.

12. The motor of claim 1, having more than two stator poles in each motor segment.