Matthew successfully defended his dissertation, titled “Design and Analysis of Axial and Radial Flux Magnetic Gears and Magnetically Geared Machines,” on October 24th, 2016. His research focused on the design and analysis of magnetic gears and magnetically geared machines as potential compact, reliable, and cost-effective alternatives to mechanical gears and conventional direct drive machines for high torque, low speed applications. During the course of his work, he developed an extensive MATLAB-based infrastructure for controlling various simulation models and analyzing their results. He used these tools to investigate key magnetic gear design trends and construct multiple magnetic gear and magnetically geared machine prototypes, including a new patent pending compact axial flux magnetically geared machine. He also created and evaluated generalized, parametric 2D and 3D magnetic equivalent circuit (MEC) magnetic gear models as significantly faster, but still extremely accurate alternatives to finite element analysis (FEA) models.
EMPE lab congratulates Dr. Johnson for his successful defense and wishes him best of luck with his professional career.