It has been proved that dual-armature permanent magnet (PM) machines have higher power density than conventional PM machines under the same copper loss. However, the thermal conditions of these machines are different. This paper makes a fair comparison between a dual-armature linear switched flux PM machine (DALSFPMM) and a linear surface-mounted PM machine (LSPMM) by considering both electromagnetic performances and thermal conditions. First, the topologies of two machines and platform are introduced. Then, the 2D and 3D finite element (FE) models are employed for the electromagnetic and thermal analyses, respectively. During the machine optimization, the thermal analysis is used to determine the copper loss under the fixed machine dimensions, while the electromagnet analysis is used to optimize the machine dimensions under the fixed copper loss. After iterations, two machines are optimized and their performances are compared. Under the limitations of 80 maximum PM temperature and 120 maximum winding temperature, the DALSFPMM can exhibit 38% higher thrust force density for the continuous duty and up to 43% higher thrust force density for the short-time duty. Finally, a prototype machine of DALSFPMM is tested to validate the analyses.

The new topology of the dual-armature flux-switching permanent magnet machine (DA-FSPM) leads to new characteristics and issues in the control of the machine, of which the mutual inductance of the two sets of armature windings is the most important one. This paper proposes a novel position–sensorless control method based on high-frequency injection (HFI) for DA-FSPM. The high-frequency model of the machine is derived, and the theory of the position estimation method is proposed. Different from the conventional HFI-based position estimation method, the proposed method utilizes the mutual inductance of the DA-FSPM rather than the machine saliency. Meanwhile, because the extracted position information based on the mutual inductance is more obvious, the proposed method also has better steady and dynamic performance. Then, the position observer based on the phase lock loop and the initial position detection method for the DA-FSPM is proposed. The experiments are executed on a DA-FSPM prototype with three-phase stator windings and five-phase rotor windings to prove the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method.