Automated Design of Multi-Phase FSCWs with the Star of Slots

This paper provides a guide to design multi-phase fractional slot concentrated windings (FSCW) using the star of slots. Even though the star of slots method works in general, it has been mostly applied to three- phase machines. In this paper, the star of slots theory is revisited and applied to multi-phase windings. A computer program in Python is developed to automate the calculations. The inputs for the winding design are: the slot number, the pole-pair number and the layers. From them, symmetry conditions are tested before drawing the star of slots and assigning the coil sides in the slots to phases. Important winding characteristics, such as the winding factor for the fundamental and harmonic waves are calculated. The program is tested on examples for FSCWs with five and seven phases.