Electromagnetics of inertial energy storage systems with fast electromechanical energy conversion

• Main Author: Oh, Sang Joon
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Subjects: engineering, electronics and electrical
• ISBN: 0599899042; 9780599899049

This research represents a different view of the electromagnetic calculations for fast discharging pulsed power supplies used originally for electromagnetic launchers (EML) in military applications. For almost two decades, very large resources valued at hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on analyzing, designing, and prototyping electromagnetic launchers for military applications and their power supplies. Actually the power supplies have been given the most attention since they represent the critical element in the chain of electromagnetic launching installation. As was pointed out many times in the literature, the sizes and consequently the power and energy densities of the pulsed electrical machines hold the key to the feasibility of EMLs. For this reason, the most advanced methods of calculation, especially the finite element method (FEM) and the boundary element method (BEM), have been used to design and analyze the electromagnetic phenomena in EML. Large amounts of time on supercomputers have. been spent in running advanced softwares solving the transient electromagnetic fields which occur in the discharging pulsed rotating generators. To our knowledge, judging on the most recent papers published on the subject, no EMLs have been fielded so far, and still the size and reliability of the pulsed power rotating generators is the unsolved problems of EML. Recently, however, a number of applications have appeared requiring the same EML technology for use in the civilian industry: hypervelocity plasma sprayers, kinetic energy storages for remote operations. One of the fundamental problems in these civilian and commercial applications is the fact that in order to make predictions of applicability, the calculations and initial design processes must be expeditious with reasonable expenses since no unlimited funds will be available and at the same time, they must assure a good precision.
This work proposes analytical methods which can give upper bounds of performance for a given high power machine relatively fast and with sufficient accuracy. After decisions have been made for a series of different designs with such expedient methods, then if necessary, the final detailed design can be achieved using sophisticated numerical methods such as FEM and BEM.