Comprehensive Analysis of the Electrical–Magneto–Mechanical Coupled Characteristics of AC Electromagnetic Actuators: A Case Study of Three-Phase AC Contactors

The motion of AC electromagnetic actuators exhibits complex electrical–magneto–mechanical coupling characteristics. A three-phase AC contactor is taken as the typical research object in this paper. Using the finite-element method (FEM) and mesh deformation technique, the commercial software COMSOL Multiphysics is adopted to analyze its static electromagnetic characteristics, together with the operational coil current response and movable core displacement. In addition, the static correlation between the magnetic force, air gap, and time-varying magnetic force curves in the movement process are obtained. An experimental platform is established to measure the magnetic force of electromagnetic actuators. The experiment results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed simulation method. The normalized root mean square errors between simulated and measured static magnetic forces are below 8% under all tested coil voltages. Furthermore, the effect of coil voltage phase angle on dynamic operational characteristics is thoroughly investigated. Combined with the closing time and final velocity of the movable core, the recommended operating window and its corresponding phase angle are determined.