Electromagnetic, thermal and electro-mechanical analysis of superconducting wind turbine generators

Last twenty years, high-temperature superconductors have been utilized in practical engineering devices and applications in an accelerating manner. In particular, developments in second generation coated superconductors are promising for large-scale power applications. However, real-scale design and optimization for these applications can be quite costly. Thus, development of methods to analyze and optimize a complete device design has fundamental and significant importance requisite in terms of both reducing cost considerably and understanding mechanisms causing loss at these stages. The search for new methods to put forward the optimum design to minimize the electromagnetic losses and to make it faster than the methods in the literature was one of the main objectives of this thesis, where a method has been developed which has reached this goal with full meaning. However, the analysis of the stresses generated under alternating transport current or magnetic field is very important in terms of stability of the system, as well as the electromagnetic losses. In this sense, the development of methods that can perform electromagnetic and electromechanical analyses together is aimed and achieved in this thesis. Besides, to prevent the system from failing by exceeding the critical parameters, knowledge and successful analyses of the temperature evolution under magnetic field or alternating transport current was one of the main motivations of the thesis, and this has been achieved. In the presented thesis, aimed whole generator design has been accomplished and a method has been developed to address all electromagnetic loss mechanisms. In addition, electromechanical and thermal analyses of these generator structures have been achieved and compared with the literature.