NOVEL DESIGN OF ELECTRICAL MACHINE FOR CEILING FAN

With the warm and humid climate throughout the year in Malaysia, ceiling fan has
become an important electrical appliance for the cooling purpose in each house. The
mechanical rotation of the existing ceiling fan is not fully utilised where the wasted
kinetic energy from the blade rotation can be captured and converted into electricity.
The purpose of this project is to propose a novel design of the electrical machine for
the ceiling fan which capable in generating electricity. In this study, a permanent
magnet machine configuration is selected in designing the ceiling fan model.
Permanent magnet is small and compact with a higher and constant flux density
resulted in higher torque and back electromotive force (EMF). This unique
characteristic has make the permanent magnet machine suitable for both motor and
generator purposes. Various literature studies had been conducted to study the effect
of different configuration and variable parameter of the permanent magnet machine
such as the number of poles and slot, slot angle, winding configuration and slot design
towards its performance. Two new designs of the ceiling fan were proposed which
consists of motor and generator fused into one system where the generated electricity
will be used to provide power supply for other suitable household appliances. The
design model will then be simulated and analysed by using finite element software,
Ansoft Maxwell. The results were focused on the flux distribution and the back EMF
of the system where the design is further optimised as the continuous improvement to
achieve the best configuration of the ceiling fan machine.