High-Frequency PCB Axial Flux Main Exciter of Brushless Synchronous Starter/Generator for Simultaneous Rotor Position Information and Power Transfer

Brushless synchronous starter/generator (BSSG) is widely used in aircraft. However, the traditional main exciter (ME) of BSSG is a bulky radial flux machine. What’s worse, a resolver is usually installed to acquire the rotor position of BSSG for starting control. As a result, the power density and reliability of BSSG is decreased. To solve these problems, a high-frequency PCB axial flux ME is designed in this paper for simultaneous rotor position information and power transfer. The distributed three-phase stator and rotor winding topology of ME is designed for PCB layout and the inductance of the windings is extracted using finite-element analysis. Then, a reliable rotor position estimation algorithm which introduced error checking mechanism is proposed. Finally, simulation is conducted with parameters of ME and the proposed position estimation strategy. The estimation results show that both the power and the rotor position information are transferred simultaneously. The rotor position estimation error is within 0.5 electrical degree and the power is 750 W.