Design and Optimization of a Magnetic Gear for a Conveyor System Application

Magnetic gears have some advantages when compared to the traditional mechanical ones, especially in terms of maintenance and absence of lubrication. Many types of magnetic gears have been presented in the last years, with the aim of pushing the torque density to very high levels.This paper deals with the design and optimization of a magnetic gear (MG) for an industrial conveyor system. The design was carried out considering the geometrical constraints and the gear ratio imposed by the target application, with the aim of reducing the torque ripple and obtaining a balanced radial attraction force on the segmented ring. Two different internal permanent magnet inner rotor geometries were drafted and optimized by means of finite element simulations. The different designs were compared against each other by means of different figures of merit, including torque ripple, radial force on the segmented ring, power losses and mass of the permanent magnets.