An Assessment of Additively Manufactured Bonded Permanent Magnets for a Distributed Wind Generator

In this paper, we examine and compare the performance of a generator design optimized using additively manufactured NdFeB–SmFeN in nylon-polymer-bonded permanent magnets (PMs) against a generator design with conventional NdFeB sintered PMs. To realize this, a commercially available 15-kW wind generator’s rotor is re-optimized using both additively manufactured and sintered NdFeB magnets using simple geometric parameterization that allowed for two specific magnet shapes, namely, arc-shaped and crown-shaped designs. Results showed that for a similar generator performance, the designs with additively manufactured bonded PMs are more cost-competitive in terms of the estimated PM material cost and also have negligible eddy current magnet losses.