Reduction of Core Loss and Increase in Electrical Power Generation of a Permanent Magnet Linear Generator for Harvesting Oceanic Wave Energy

Permanent magnet linear generator (PMLG) is mostly applied to oceanic wave energy conversion systems because of its excellent conveniences. But the conventional PMLGs suffer from much core loss and demagnetization because of armature reaction during operation, which are responsible for the electrical power generation. To overcome this problem, standard and advanced magnetic materials are applied to the PMLG for analysis in this paper. At first, a PMLG is designed to test the effect of using the advanced magnetic materials. Further, the PMLG is analyzed with standard steel core and M4-Carlite magnetic core along with two neodymium iron boron permanent magnets namely N30H and N48H. Construction, working principle, and mathematical model of the PMLG are presented. Demagnetization curves of N30H and N48H permanent magnets, magnetization, and core loss curves of the standard steel core and M4-Carlite magnetic core are presented for comparison. Simulation works are executed by finite element method. The mesh setup, output power, voltage, current, and core loss are also presented. Various output parameters of the PMLG for two different temperatures are compared. By observing the characterization of the PMLG, N48H permanent magnet and M4-Carlite magnetic core are selected and proposed for the design. Simulation results show that the proposed PMLG can generate 2.85kW more output power while minimizing the core loss significantly.