DEVELOPMENT OF A 1800-HERTZ ALTERNATOR AND CONTROLS FOR SPACE POWER SYSTEMS

summary of the system performance goals (requirements) are listed in Table 1. ALTERNATOR The Brayton alternator is a solid-rotor modified- Lundell or Rice machine operating at 36,000 rpm, and designed to produce 10.7 kilowatts at 0.7 5 power factor with coolant inlet temperature at 70° F. The machine is hermetically sealed to prevent loss of the working gas in the system. Figure 2 is a sectional view of the alterna- tor, showing: (1) the brazed bimetallic rotor, (2) the main gap, (3) the auxiliary gaps, (4) the armature, (5) the dual, stationary field coils, (6) the nonmagnetic armature separator, (7) the dual heat exchanger and (8) the heat shield. It is interesting to note that this machine is a sophis- ticated version of the dynamo patented by Mr. Lewis B. Rice in 1897. The rotor of the alternator consists of two separate magnetic sections with two north poles on one section and two south poles on the other. To obtain a smooth, high-strength rotor, the interpolar space is a nonmagnetic metal. The flux path is shown by the arrows in figure