Conveyor System with a Highly Integrated Permanent Magnet Gear and Motor

Magnetic gears have attracted increasing attention in recent years due to many possible advantages over the mechanical gear. Many papers have been presented with theoretical proof of the basic properties and topologies of the gears and their parallels to mechanical counterparts, however, very little work has been done to implement the gears into actual applications which fully utilises the desirable properties of magnetic gears. This paper presents a concept study and physical demonstrator of a magnetic gear and permanent magnet machine highly integrated into a drive unit for chain conveyor systems. Several current mechanical gear/motor combinations are replaced by the new drive unit, which is more compact and potentially more energy efficient. An experimentally measured torque density of 142 Nm/l is obtained for the active gear volume.