volume | PIER Journals

Abstract

Manufacturing tolerances introduce unavoidable dimensional deviations in electrical machine components. In the case of switched reluctance linear synchronous motors (SRLSMs), the manufacturing tolerance, Δx, may significantly affect the thrust characteristics. Therefore, a systematic investigation of the impact of manufacturing tolerance, Δx, on the thrust characteristics of a cylindrical SRLSM through finite element analysis and experimental validation is presented. Two mover shafts with different tolerance control strategies, denoted as S45C-01 and S45C-02 were fabricated. Based on the finding, the accumulated tolerances of -562.3 μm and -20 μm for S45C-01 and S45C-02, respectively, were acquired using a vision measuring system. Then, the model that incorporated the accumulating manufacturing tolerance, Δx, was created and simulated. Thrust characteristics were evaluated under both ideal and tolerance inclusive conditions and experimentally measured over a current range of 0.1-1.0 A. The results indicate that neglecting manufacturing tolerance leads to substantial discrepancies between simulated and measured thrust, particularly at low excitation currents, with thrust errors exceeding 200%. When measured manufacturing tolerances are included in the simulation, the thrust error is significantly reduced to below 8.4% for S45C-01 and below 4% for S45C-02, demonstrating close agreement with experimental results. The findings confirm that manufacturing tolerance is a critical factor in accurately predicting SRLSM thrust performance and that tolerance-inclusive modeling substantially improves the reliability of simulation-based performance evaluation.

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Dr. Fairul Azhar bin Abdul Shukor

Prof. Hiroyuki Wakiwaka

Dr. Kunihisa Tashiro